John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Assessment of children and adolescents has been the stepchild of assessment in the past, but no longer. This book shows the momentous developments of the last fifteen years. The emphasis has shifted to behavioral assessment. Along with this move away from psychodynamic formulations a series of specific actuarial assessment procedures aimed at specific narrow areas of psychopathology are available. The research support for these procedures offers normative data, rules for scoring, and demonstrated validity. In the era of managed care and cost consciousness, these procedures also have the advantage of being more cost effective and consume less professional time. In addition many also provide data relevant to outcomes of treatment. This allows for clinicians to do a better job of designing individual approaches to a client’s needs. It used to be possible to do a fairly good job of making a diagnosis, but once a differential diagnosis was made, everybody got the same treatment. That does not need to happen now. The book brings together the experience and concerns of developmental pediatrics, clinical child psychology, school psychology, child and adolescent psychiatry, and child psychopathology. The chapters are somewhat unevenly written but the information given is good, relevant, and up to date. The editors have done well in making their plan clear and seeing to it that the contributors deliver what they wanted. The result is a book that can be used with profit by anyone who is concerned to improve the quality of assessment of children and adolescents and also those who need to understand and consume assessments. It is recommended for purchase as a book that can be browsed and used as a reference volume for checking what is known about the assessment of most of the problems children and adolescents encounter. Reviewed by Ralph Underwager, Institute for Psychological Therapies.
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