Abstract
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has required psychologists to adopt measures like physical distancing and mask wearing, though other safety procedures such as travel restrictions or prohibitions on in-person practice and research have fostered the use of tele-health tools. In this article, we review options for using the Rorschach task via videoconference and provide preliminary data from using a new electronic app for remote R-PAS administration to determine whether the remote administration in an electronic form yields different information than in-person administration with the cards in hand. As a pilot study, our focus is on the “first factor” of all Rorschach scores, i.e., complexity. Data were collected from 60 adult Italian community volunteers, and statistical analyses evaluated the extent to which the average complexity score significantly departed from R-PAS normative expectations (SS = 100), accompanied by Bayesian likelihoods for supporting the null hypothesis. Results suggest that the general level of complexity shown by the test-takers when administered the Rorschach remotely with the new R-PAS app closely resembles that previously observed using “standard” in-person procedures. Tentative analyses of other R-PAS scores suggested normative departures that could be due to the effects of the app, testing at home, or responses to the pandemic. We offer recommendations for future research and discuss practical implications.
Highlights
The spread of COVID-19 has dramatically changed the landscape of mental health services around the world, strongly affecting the ways in which psychological assessment used to be conducted
The average complexity score produced by our sample was standard score (SS) = 100.83 (SD = 12.29; range = 73.00–130.00) and was not significantly different from the value of SS = 100.00 that one would see if our data perfectly matched Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) normative expectations, t(59) = .525, p = .601, d =
Recent studies have laid the groundwork in support of several psychological measures remotely administered (e.g., Brearly, 2017; Cullum et al, 2006; Galusha-Glasscock et al, 2016; Harrell et al, 2014; Parmanto et al, 2013; Smith et al, 2017; Wadsworth et al, 2018; Wright, 2018), identifying valid tests that could be used with a digital format (Corey & Ben-Porath, 2020; Wright, 2020; Wright & Raiford, 2021; Wright et al, 2020)
Summary
The spread of COVID-19 has dramatically changed the landscape of mental health services around the world, strongly affecting the ways in which psychological assessment used to be conducted. Over the past 2 years, preventive and corrective measures to control the COVID-19 outbreak have caused difficulties in delivering basic mental health care services. The scenario of mental health services seems to have changed radically and definitively. It is necessary to adapt psychological services to the new tele-assessment context. Psychological assessment has had difficulty adapting quickly to the pandemic context, especially compared to psychotherapeutic treatment practice that has moved quite to the online mode, thanks to studies that empirically
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