ABSTRACT
Instructors in doctoral-level personality assessment courses know that we are regularly tasked with emphasizing the critically important aspects of psychological assessment to our students. As students near the end of their three-semester assessment course sequence, the first author has often asked them the following question: “If you could only choose one assessment measure or technique across the large number that you have learned, which one would it be?” Very quickly, a student undoubtedly offers a correction, stating that no psychologist would base findings on only one measure or piece of data. After acknowledging such ethically minded thinking, the hypothetical is continued. Students throw out various ideas, including the most robust measures they have learned (e.g., MMPI-2, Rorschach, WAIS-IV). Typically, a small minority will often state (meekly) that they would want to simply conduct a thorough interview. This answer correctly identifies the binding “glue” that holds almost all assessments together. It is the interview that will be these students’ most valuable resource for the vast majority of assessments they conduct. The importance of interview data has certainly been underscored in the current literature (e.g., Fontes, 2008; Karg, Wiens, & Blazei, 2013; Sharp, Williams, Rhyner, & Ilardi, 2013), and it is a central focus of this chapter.
