2025 SPA Convention & Workshops

The Society for Personality Assessment is responding to the call for action from our membership to foster equity, inclusion, and social justice in our work as assessment psychologists. Our goal is to encourage work that applies to groups who are not typically represented in assessment research, presentations, and dialogues. This special track will be a home base and a launchpad for infusing the entire conference with energy and momentum towards these goals. Please be prepared to present and/or attend with a curious, positive and non-shaming attitude. All are welcome to participate.

Programs requested will be proposals that include systematically oppressed groups in their study, that extend the application of a test to other populations such as through translation to another language or establishment or new/updated norms, theoretical programs based on assessment with non-dominant groups or proposals that foster discussion of equity, inclusion, and social justice values and issues as they apply to assessment psychology.

Equity means that everyone gets what they need to succeed (Project READY, 2021). Inclusion is reflected in “organizational strategies and practices that promote meaningful social and academic interactions among persons and groups who differ in their experiences, their views, and their traits” (Tienda, 2013, p. 467). Social justice “is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both individually and in our associations with others. Social justice also imposes on each of us a personal responsibility to collaborate with others...[and] to design and continually perfect our institutions as tools for personal and social development” (Center for Economic and Social Justice, 2021).