[MUSIC] Greetings from Thomas State University, I'm Valeria Petrova, an Associate Professor and certified consultant. And first of all I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to you for choosing my course Psychodiagnostic and Psychological Assessment. And now, please let me elaborate on its content, main characteristics, and the history of its creation. Getting acquainted with the audience, I like saying jokingly, that I have been a lecturer and a consultant on psychology since the last millennia. And all my lecture and consultant experience has shown that the uptake of new information must be accompanied by verification of new knowledge in practice. My online course is exactly like this. I understand that all of us are very busy people. And everyone wants to acquire a higher level of competence as quickly as possible, and without much effort. But I am apt to say to my students that psychodiagnostics is at our fingertips. It is learned, not only in the process of listening to lectures, but it is also learned during the experience acquisition of the youth of the diagnostic lessons. If it is a simple standardized test, you may have only ten testees for each in-depth study. Moreover, there are many diagnostic techniques which require a week long seminar for the first acquaintance with them. And for, the more or less free use of them, a hundred of clients, tested at least. Therefore, I always recommend my students to start with self-diagnostics at the beginning. Then, to be sure, you can try to apply this technique to your friends. But please, warn these people that you are not a magician, you are only a learning student. And the interpretation of the results you'll be trying to implement is a trial balloon. It is what International Test Commission guidelines requires. Due to this, you will gain an invaluable experience. If you start a little explain the diagnostic results. Your friends will inform you of this immediately. In the same situation, a strange client remains silent. And think something not very pleasant about your qualification. I think this activity will help you become a qualified practical psychologist really quickly. So, I offer you an online lecture course, Psychodiagnostics and Psychological Assessment, which consists of five modules or themes. In the first module, we will talk about what psychodiagnostics is as a science, how it was created, when the ordinary knowledge accumulated by mankind was transformed into a scientific discipline, what significant psychodiagnostic procedure is, which results it allows you to get, and how they can be used. Well, at the end of the module, we will discuss the meaning of very fashionable and mysterious word assessment, where it comes from, what it represents, and how it is connected with the classical psychodiagnostics. My experience tells me that people, even those professionals, who face assessments procedures in their work have very strange ideas about the objectives, nature, and the possible outcome of psychological assessment. In my opinion, you just need to survive while learning the second theme. It is clearly not coolest and one. However, its content forms the basis of the professional competence of the practical psychologist. This is the psychometric characteristics of the tests. We will talk about tests reliability and validity. I hope that at the end of this module you will understand that the psychodiagnostics is not only the traditional test with questions like, are you afraid of the darkness? And two variance of answers, yes and no, but something else. And then, we will dive into classic 20th century psychodiagnostics. Each month, the new tests, and methods, and techniques of psychodiagnostics and assessment appear in the scientific literature. If you look at the top ten of the most popular test device that good old France, which are used in the practice of psychology for decades. In the third theme, we can see that in detail the five critical approaches to the diagnostics of intelligence. And in the fourth one, classical approach to the diagnostics of personality. The fifth theme is devoted to the integrative approach in psychodiagnostics and assessment of the 21st century. So let's go anyway, it's time to earn up the common top and begin to learn specific sections of psychodiagnostics. Well, I give you the task so that you busy yourselves between the first and the second lectures. Think and specify at least three of your personal, private, and completely unique learning goals of the course, psychodiagnostics, and psychological assessment. They will help you to learn the proposed material more consciously. Good luck. I will be glad to meet you at my next lecture. [MUSIC]
