A BUSCA POR COLISORES NO PROCESSO DE AVALIAÇÃO PSICOLÓGICA

Psychological assessment is a process that seeks to answer, through method, technique and/or instruments, what the psychological characteristics of a given individual or group are. The use of the technique does not occur in a neutral way, since the choice of test, method or instrument is preceded by the assumed epistemological assumptions. In order to explore the roles that variables can assume in a context of psychological assessment based on the possible interactions between them, the reader is introduced to the definition of measurement; the definitions of independent, dependent, confounding, mediating, moderating, covariate and colliding variables are presented. Each type is explored in a hypothetical context of assessing a patient with complaints of feelings of loneliness. With this approximation of mathematics and psychology, the aim is to expand the knowledge of the psychologist reader so that he/she may be more assertive in his/her clinical practice and in the use of assessment instruments. Keywords: Mental health measures; Statistical measurement; Psychological measurement.