Shifting Cultural Lenses in Psych Assessment - Integrating Clinical/Statistical Approaches (1 CE)

In this talk I propose an approach to psychological assessment that respects and critically considers the client’s sociocultural context, test norms, and individual variability. Culture and race are dynamic constructs that are embedded in specific sociocultural contexts. An
assessment approach that draws on rigorous science and conceptualizations is needed to capture the diverse meanings associated with culture and race.

Dr. Steven R. López is a Professor of Psychology and Social Work at the University of Southern California. He has dedicated his 38-year career as an academic clinical psychologist to integrating a cultural perspective in mental health intervention, assessment and research with particular attention to Latinos. His passion is best illustrated by the recently completed National Institute of Mental Health-funded community campaign to reduce the duration of untreated psychosis in a largely Spanish-speaking Latinx community in the Los Angeles area. In another line of research, he and his team developed a process model of cultural competence for clinical practice that then served as the basis of the training and evaluation of nearly 1000 mental health professionals in California. Dr. Lopez has also served as a mentor for many psychologists, some of whom are now university faculty members and others are working in the community. For 15 years he directed an NIH-funded summer research training program in Mexico in which 131 undergraduate and graduate students from many universities across the nation participated. Finally, Dr. Lopez was one of the five science editors for the highly cited Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health: Culture, Race and Ethnicity (2001).

Featured Speaker for 2021 SPA Convention

Steven Lopez | University of Southern California 

Goals & Objectives

1. To identify key principles in how best to consider culture in psychological assessment. 
2. To integrate both clinical and statistical approaches to considering culture in psychological assessment.