Qualitative Assessment: An Approach for Counselors

Abstract

Qualitative assessment offers the counselor methods of helping clients to know and understand themselves better—methods that are flexible, open‐ended, holistic, and nonstatistical. The methods are diverse and include card sorts, simulations, exercises and games, worksamples, and others. Many of the methods may be considered projective in nature and thereby tap values, interests, and needs in ways that standardized tests do not. Because these activities involve the client actively, they can flow directly out of and back into the counseling relationship rather than being a discrete element.