position paper 4

“Since most of the assessment instruments in the market were made based on American culture, Muslim counselors should not use standardized assessment instruments at all”. Discuss.
NUR IZZAH ZAHARI
0818444

Many people view the terms of counseling and assessment are being similar and normally they though this process will involve the use of the test. Absolutely yes. Assessment plays a crucial role in the counseling process and it will help counselor to gain information about the client. What is actually the definition of assessment? A term closely related with assessment is psychological test, which Anastasi and Urbina (1997) defined as an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behavior. Typically, assessment includes gathering and integrating information about a client in a manner that promotes effective treatment (Cohen, Swerdlik, & Smith, 1992).. Assessment need to meet the standard of the appropriateness of the norming group or criterion, the reliability and the validation evidence. Assessment can be divided into three which are objective, qualitative and clinical. The example of instruments we used such as personality assessment instrument, interest inventories assessment and career assessment instrument.

According to the above topic why Muslim counselor should not use standardized assessment instruments at all because it’s doesn’t fix with Muslim world culture. Since most of the assessment instruments in the market were made based on American culture, totally Muslim and Western culture can’t go along together because too many contradiction in Muslim norm. It is because, in selection of assessment instruments one of the standard counselor must consider is the norming, reliability, and validity. To make it appropriate for the test taker counselor must consider the cultural background of the clients. So, if our culture is different how we can use the instrument made based on American culture? Their environment, cognitive patterns, languages and how they being raised up in their family are different with us so, how does its going to work. At the end, it will give non valid result. Talking about languages, I have experience to answer the assessment, but somehow I do not understand what actually is all about. I do not understand the structure and the language used, so I just answer without understand it. Other than that, the way of western people sees the world is different from people in Muslim world. They normally separated between religions and worldly. They do not concern about spiritual values but Muslim always keeps religion and soul first. For example, many theories we used were taken by Western and most of the theories sometimes we think that it does not have logical sense at all and contradict with our religion.

However as for me, it is not wrong to use these standardize instrument and I do not fully agree if we say that Muslim counselor should not use standardized assessment instruments at all but as long as the counselor knows how to change and make it adaptable to Muslim culture it may be used. Not all the subjects in the western assessment instrument have negative side but they do have positive side that we can take. So, what counselor should do before change or interpreted into easy languages so that we can understand are the counselor’s qualifications in determining whether to use an instrument or not. Counselor must have a proper training before using or changing the instrument because it is unethical if without training. The important of proper training is in order to counselor to get a reliability and validity result. What is contradicting with Islam, counselor should know, adjust or delete it and make it adaptable for clients.

In a conclusion, although most of the assessment instruments in the market were made based on American culture, Muslim counselors can use standardized assessment instruments as long as it’s adaptable to our culture and certain time. In order to make effective treatment strategy, it is the counselor responsibility to gain sufficient information through assessment about the client. So that, counselor should know how to provide effective assessment to client to gain successful treatment either to refer to America assessment or not in order to have a valid result.