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It’s always been there when you test – questions about the client’s truthfulness. You are bothered, year after year, by questions regarding client answers. You’ve had to accept the client’s testimony and the evaluator’s assurances. And, you can’t fully reconcile yourself to tests lacking an empirically based Truthfulness Scale. Insuring client integrity has been a matter of concern along with identifying client denial, problem minimization and "faking good." Because of these concerns, you have found it difficult to corroborate decision making.

Few tests address the "client truthfulness" issue. In fact, the psychodiagnostic bellwether, the MMPI, wasn’t updated for 50 years. The MMPI was one of the early developers of Truthfulness Scales and only updated the test in the last couple of years. Other tests are often defended with a handful of studies incorporating a few hundred subjects. Limited empirically based truthfulness data is one of the reasons why selecting a test can be such an irritating and stressful experience. And, that’s what makes Risk & Needs Assessment, Inc. (Risk & Needs) built-in Truthfulness Scales important.

Risk & Needs tests give you a way to virtually eliminate questions concerning client truthfulness while being tested. Proprietary truthfulness scales reliably and accurately identify client denial, problem minimization and attempts to fake good. And, each Risk & Needs test has a built in Truthfulness Scale. Automated tests have a very big advantage over interview procedures in that a built-in "Truthfulness" component can measure client attempts to present too good (or too bad) an image.

Risk & Needs tests built-in Truthfulness Scales avoid confronting clients with unnecessary truthfulness issues. The Risk & Needs Truthfulness Scale is an unobtrusive means to detect client denial, problem minimization and faking good without constantly hitting the issue head on. Some clients strongly react to implications or questions about their being untruthful. Truthfulness Scales are standardized on the offender, probationer, inmate and counseling client population the test was meant to evaluate. In this way, respondents’ answers are compared to other respondents. Some respondents try to deny, minimize their problems or fake good more than others. Because scale scores are standardized on thousands of respondents, this "truthfulness" measure is both accurate and fair. The Truthfulness Scale also detects a client’s response set or response bias. Many assessment tests simply do not address client truthfulness. Risk & Needs tests provide for strong accountability of assessment-driven recommendations.

Other unique features are many and include Risk & Needs' Truth-Corrected scores, three test administration modes, deleting client names from diskettes with a few keystrokes to insure confidentiality and compliance with HIPAA (federal regulation 45 C.F.R. 164.501), test data input verification to insure accuracy, annual database research, and much more.

Risk & Needs tests enable you to answer client truthfulness questions confidently.

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