Teenage Depression > Personal Values > Personal Multi-screening Inventory > Structured Administration of the PMSI
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Structured Administration of the PMSIStructured Administration of the PMSI
The second general approach to administering the PMSI is one in which you will review the subscales/items with your clients prior to having them complete the instrument. By reviewing the ambiguously targeted subscales in advance, you and your clients can decide together what are the appropriate targets for evaluation.
Consider, for example, the Relationship with Child subscale. If your client has no children you could answer zero (0) in the answer space for the first item of the subscale and draw a straight line down through all remaining items to indicate that the subscale is not relevant for the client and can therefore be skipped. If the subscale is relevant for the client, you will want to determine which child in the family will be the appropriate target for evaluation. If the client tells you that he is having the greatest difficulty with Eddie, merely post Eddie's name on the PMSI beside the subscale name. In some cases the client will indicate having problems with two or more children and in such cases you will want to discuss with the client which child will be selected as the evaluation target or whether the client will attempt a global assessment with respect to all of the troublesome children. The essential point here is that when using a structured administration of the PMSI you will review ambiguously targeted subscales and decide, with the client, each of the appropriate evaluation targets. The principal advantage of using a structured administration of the PMSI is that all ambiguity about evaluation targets is removed before the client actually completes the PMSI. The major difference between the two methods of administration is that one approach eliminates ambiguity after the client completes the PMSI and the other eliminates ambiguity before the PMSI is completed. While either method will produce highly useful results we recommend the latter for clinical practice because of increased informational relevance and clarity of results. Moreover, the structured administration has the advantage of being guided by the practitioner within the context of conducting a more focussed assessment of the client's problem situations. The unstructured administration is extremely useful in settings which choose to use the PMSI as a primary initial screening tool prior to conducting a strategic action plan. Neither method should be viewed as being right or wrong. Rather, they serve different purposes and produce slightly different results. However, each has its place and should be used in accord with the unique assessment needs and goals of your organization. |