Writing an Effective Psychological Report

Writing an Effective Psychological Report

"An effective psychological report written for forensic evaluations shares the same requirements for good report writing expected of all other psychological reports and further contains additional requirements unique to its forensic purpose." (From the essay #3 handout). The first topic I will be going over is showing the different way each evaluation can be unique. The second topic I will cover is good report writing in psychological reports.

There are many different requirements unique to writing an evaluation. There is the psychiatric setting, in this setting there is more of a relationship with the client. By nature the psychologist would try to have open and trusting relationship. Since that is one of the goals of the psychologist, they would give recommendations that are more in-depth. Also the psychologist would use more DSM-IV classifications. Another example is in an educational setting. With this style the educational setting tend to focus on hard data. They give a large array of written test. The reason they prefer this is because it will give the court system something tangible. Which leads me to the legal context. A lawyer or courts calls in a forensic

Psychologist to make an evaluation. The forensic psychologist is neutral through out the evaluation. They can not have open and trusting relationship. Usually in a case where the subject committed a crime he/she might want to say what ever they think the psychologist would want to hear, to make there sentence lighter. So a forensic psychologist must remain neutral. Also the forensic psychologist has to make an accurate evaluation because he has a lot of influence on what would happen to the subject in a court case. Now ...

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I have gone over the different ways each evaluation can be unique. The examples I have given are Psychiatric setting, the educational setting and the legal setting. I hope by giving these examples I have been able to show you the differences in each evaluations and what makes them unique. The second topic I have covered is good report writing in psychological reports. The ideas I covered where the referral question, evaluation procedures, behavioral observations, background information, test results, impressions, interpretation, and recommendations. With these main ideas you can write the prefect evaluation. "An effective psychological report written for forensic evaluations shares the same requirements for good report writing expected of all other psychological reports and further contains additional requirements unique to its forensic purpose."