The speculative binge of the 1990’s produced a cornucopia of assessment fallacies. In retrospect the absurdities of some are obvious, such as using interview-based procedures for prediction. Yet, even today some assessors maintain that interviews, more specifically "their interview" is reliable. Really?

Over the past decade interviews such as the SARA, ASI and LSI have been accommodated. Much of this misunderstanding is attributed to misleading adjectives like "semi-structured" interview. These terms are used incorrectly when describing interviews.

At conferences, especially sex offender and domestic violence conferences, presenters brush aside questions about interview reliability, validity and accuracy. It’s as if fundamental test standards don’t apply to interview based procedures. If that’s the case what evaluation, assessment and testing standards do apply?

Most evaluators know that the interview is widely used despite its paradoxical lack of demonstrated reliability and validity. Over the years there have been several literature reviews on the poor performance of the interview when used by itself. Most contemporary evaluators agree that the interview is not a defensible predictive technique.

Inter-interviewer reliability problems exist. Regardless of an interviewers training, each interviewer has their own personality which strongly influences how they repeat, paraphrase and probe for answers.

Used by themselves, it is wrong to imply that interview-based assessment procedures are reliable, valid and accurate predictors of a person's problems or behaviors.