ABSTRACT
When learning about psychological assessment we are often taught that assessment is objective. If we use reliable and valid measures and use the right norms to interpret test findings, we can understand a person from the data gathered from the standardized measures. Of course, assuring that the measures we use are statistically sound and that we use the most representative norms possible is important; they enable us to compare results to appropriate groups of people to determine if the individual we are assessing is similar to or different from others like her or him on the constructs being measured. However, it does not always allow us to grasp the etiology or meaning of those characteristics and symptoms for a given individual. In other words, it does not allow us to thoroughly assess a unique human being who functions within individual, familial, community, and cultural contexts that give meaning to his or her traits, behaviors, cognitions, emotions, and symptoms. This underscores the distinction between psychological testing (i.e., use of the test instruments for measurement) and psychological assessment (i.e., integration of multiple sources of information for developing a comprehensive conceptualization; Krishnamurthy & Meyer, 2016). Trying to understand that individual outside of the context within which he or she lives is limiting. Thoroughly understanding an individual requires exploring the meaning imposed by the context within which she or he exists and how that meaning is reflected in the data we collect. That context has many components, including, for example, individual history, family history, biological factors, and cultural variables. In this chapter the impact of one of those components, gender, is addressed.
