Collaborative, individualized assessment.

Collaborative, individualized assessment is an approach to psychological assessment in which the assessor and the client work together to develop productive understandings. Collaboration is a means of individualizing the assessment--its process, resulting suggestions, and written accounts. In this approach, life events are regarded as primary data. Test scores, categories, and related research are used as bridges into a particular life and as tools for then exploring that life. This article, an invited Master Lecture presented at the 1999 Society for Personality Assessment (SPA) meeting, presents examples of contextualizing, intervening, describing in life-world terms, and writing individualized reports with suggestions. Historical struggles to promote individualized assessment and current openness to its practices, especially within SPA, are mentioned. A hermeneutic approach to impression formation is described.