The mission of this interest group is to improve the quality of assessment training and supervision in the field of psychology, through improving and disseminating resources, promoting best practices, and advocating for rigor. Members of this interest group include academic and field-based trainers, supervisors, students, and clinicians. Topics addressed include bridging the gap between what is being taught in graduate programs and expectations for internship, licensure, and future practice; how to best assess competency during training; and how to best support those teaching and supervising assessment given the similarities and differences of graduate programs. Finally, the group will also make an effort to increase exposure to personality assessment throughout the psychology education lifespan, from undergraduate through postgraduate settings.

The Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment (CTA) interest group offers the opportunity to meet with assessors thinking about, working to develop, and practicing this approach to psychological assessment and intervention. Developments, training and learning opportunities, ideas, research efforts and findings, and marketing issues involving CTA, as well as the successes and challenges our members experience, are central topics of discussion. This interest group offers support to those on the cutting edge as well as those just learning CTA and it fosters a collaborative community of assessors, promoting connections and friendships. Everyone is welcome! Students and assessors new to CTA are especially valued.

The mission of the Psychoanalytic Interest Group is to provide SPA members with a focused opportunity to discuss their interests in psychoanalytic approaches to personality assessment and to create a network of professionals to support each other's education, writing, and research. The group supports the mission of the SPA Board of Trustees by fostering membership interest in these topics, and by providing resources to support direct clinical service, supervision, teaching, and research. Recent initiatives have included collating a biannual summary of members' interests and initiatives and developing a list of significant publications that one might consult to learn and teach about this approach to assessment. We have also been piloting a mentorship program matching students and early-career clinicians with more senior assessors. The group also encourages scientific presentations, posters, continuing education workshops, and publications that integrate psychoanalytic theory with personality assessment. We welcome all colleagues to join us, particularly graduate students and early career psychologists seeking support in integrating their psychoanalytic and assessment interests.

This group aims to foster international exchange and collaboration on psychological assessment, in terms of education, policy, research and clinical practice. Another important goal is to develop strategies to facilitate the attendance of international students and members to the SPA Annual Meeting, other meetings and workshops. This committee also works to help members integrate their interests into SPA symposia, presentations and publications. In these ways, the interest group would like to increase SPA’s international focus.

The mission of the Health Psychology interest group is to provide SPA members (including students) with an opportunity to discuss their interests and experiences (direct service, supervisory, and research) of psychological and personality assessment in medical settings. These settings include general hospitals, primary care clinics (family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics, and pediatrics), and specialty clinics (cardiology, surgery, physical medicine & rehab, neurology, oncology, etc.). The interest group will discuss the role of personality assessment in medical settings, share health psychology assessment experiences, distribute a list of health psychology references, and plan for future SPA symposiums focusing on assessment in medical settings.

The mission of the FIG is developing interest and momentum for the implementation of forensic psychology and personality assessment within the scope of SPA’s overall mission and to disseminate findings to the membership and SPA Board: to develop membership and Board interests and resources, support forensically-relevant publications in JPA, forensic psychology presentations at Annual Conventions, and continuing education workshops. Starting in 2016, a presentation of topical interest to participants will be presented every year.

The link for our group is:https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13587551