Psychological Assessment for Adoptive Parents - Desklib

This confidential psychological report presents a measure of the suitability of the adoptive parents towards taking care of the adopted child as part of the requirements to be fulfilled by the adoption agencies in Australia. The report includes assessments, tools of assessment, results, summary, and recommendations.

Running Head: A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONFIDENTIAL REPORT 1
PSY4406 Psychological Assessment and Intervention
Part A: Confidential Psychological Report
Name of Applicant: Mr Nate Royd Mrs Phillipa Royd
Gender: Male Female
Date of Birth: 16 April 1982 6 May 1979
Age: 36 years 6 months 39 years 5 months
Assessments Date:
Name of Assessor:
Reason for Assessment
The rationale behind this assessment is present a measure of the suitability of the adoptive parents
towards taking care of the adopted child as part of the requirements to be fulfilled by the adoption
Agencies in Australia (Rotabi, 2016, pp.81-92). The assessment further seeks to examine the
satisfaction of the relationship between the partners willing to adopt, which reflects the parenting
capabilities of the spouses before they are delegated the task of taking care of the child.
Additionally, (Hoffmann-Riem, 2017) ascertains that personal relationships are the central social
component that determines human behaviour especially among the couples. The scholarly family
has acknowledged that satisfaction among the married couples is the principal motive that drives the
willingness and the urge to adopt among the childless partners (Baudin, De la Croix, and Gobbi,
2015, pp.1852-1882). However, the agencies have a mandate to evaluate the aspects that determine
the readiness and the likelihood of the partners to take care of an adopted child as the basis of this
assessment report.
Background and Presentation
Mr and Mrs Ryod are a couple that has been married for ten years living in Melbourne, Australia.
Their relationship started after Nate Ryod met his spouse Phillipa Ryod in Darwin when he was on
his holiday in Darwin before she relocated to Melbourne to stay with her fiancée. However, Nate

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works in hospitality as a gaming manager at the Pokies who supports his mother living in next
suburb after his father deceased when he was 23 years of age and has a single sibling residing in
Dubai. Phillipa, on the other hand, has a part time work and a volunteer at the local bookstore and
has four siblings who are also married with three living in Darwin while the other sibling is living in
London.
However, the interview report claims the two have lived happily for the period they have been
married despite having no child. Back in 2016, Phillipa, who is perceived as a passionate mother,
who has a cat as a pet, had a miscarriage that had her treated for five years. The incidence was a
massive blow to the couple as they have anticipated for the child they could take care of thus sought
the guidance of the church prayers, the family and friends. Two years later, the partners tried to
adopt or look for a donor but decided to conduct a study of the agencies and the policies governing
the adoption of the infant children in Australia (Lowe, Lee, and Macvarish, 2015, pp.198-211). That
was when they approached the agency for the infant adoption interview.
In their marriage life, Phillipa expresses her main difference with her spouse claiming that he is
more social than she is and goes out more often and comes back late than she would like him to
whereas she loves staying at home on Netflix among other home activities. Contrary, Nate
expresses his disappointment in their marriage by the fact that his partner gives herself a hard time
for being infertile and taking to a personal level that traumatises her while he is helpless about it.
Through trials to make things work out for them, the family came up with the solution to prepare
for adopting an infant as a solution.
Tools of Assessment
 The Semi-structured psychological interview with clients
 The Mini International Personality Item Pool, a 20-item scale
 Relationship Assessment Scale, a 7-item scale

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Assessment Results
Semi-structured interviews
From the semi-structured interview questionnaire, we can deduce that the partners support one
another with the sense of understanding, kindness, and caring as evidenced during the period after
miscarriage. Nate, who is the husband, portrays the attributes of a responsible partner through
emotional, medical, and the financial support to his fiancée. Throughout the 10-year old marriage,
the spouses have not indicated any signs of break-ups, separation, or eloping as indicated by the
statistics among most couples in the developed countries including Australia (Middlemiss, 2017).
The results from the interviews indicate a great notion of understanding between the partners, which
reflects considerations the social stability in their marriage. Additionally, the results put Phillipa in
the position of a potential caring mother through the nurturing and tendering of the cat and the love
for animals is an indication that she could take care of an adopted child. These attributes when
qualitatively put together can be relied upon the conclusion that the couple can take care of an
adopted infant without any supervision from the adoption agency.
The Mini-IPIP, 20-item scale
The results from the Mini-IPIP, 20-item scales negates some statements in the technique then
classifies the comments into five significant factors. These factors are weighed on a total score of
20 in showing a positive response to the factor or characteristic. However, from the analysis of the
results, it was determined that any score above ten should be considered as a positive existence of
the feature in the participant. The scores indicated that both Mr and Mrs Ryod are extraversion,
possess agreeableness, conscientiousness, and are intellectually perfect due to the scores above 10
while they are not neuroticism as they scored below 10 in this factor.
Factor Total score for Ryod Total score for Phillipa
Extraversion 15 10
Agreeableness 13 16
conscientiousness 16 18

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Neuroticism 7 6
Intellect/Imagination 16 18
In psychology, the individuals who score high on neuroticism are likely to experience feelings such
as fear, anger, worries, anxiety, frustrations, depressed mood, guilt, and loneliness among others in
the big five personality traits. The Mini-IPIP test results, therefore, indicate that the couple does not
exhibit the mentioned traits that are unfavourable to raise an infant. These depict the suitability of
the couple for adopting the infant.
RAS, 7-item scale
The results of from the Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS) summed up to 35 as the total score
for all the comments in the assessment. However, items four and seven are reversed to be in line
with the rest of the questions (Falconier, Nussbeck, Bodenmann, Schneider, and Bradbury., 2015,
pp.221-235).
Putting the scale in the category of high, medium, and low where the score of 1-2 represent “low,”
the score of 3 to represent “medium,” whereas the score 4-5 to represent “high,” we can attribute
conclusively that both the partners scored “High” from the calculate mean of their scores.
Additionally, a correlation analysis between the partners’ scores indicated a value of 0.75 indicating
that the responses are strongly correlated towards the positive.
Furthermore, from table 1 we can also establish the percentiles in the scores. This can be
accomplished through arranging of the scores in an ascending order as shown below.
3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5
The index for the 25th percentile or the quartile is obtained by multiplying 0.25 by 14, which is the
total count. This gives an index score of 3.5, which can be rounded off to four. Therefore, the 25th
percentile is the fourth value, which is three.

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Percentiles and Quartiles
Percentiles Index Score
25th percentile/ 1st Quartile 4 3
50th / Quartile 7 4
75th / 3rd Quartile 11 5
The results indicate that most of the scores fall above the 50th percentile or the quartile indicating a
positive satisfaction of the couple in their relationship thus making suggesting a positive potential
for the couple to take good care of the adopted child.
Summary and Recommendations
From the results of the assessment tools, it can be concluded that Mr and Mrs Ryod are suitable
adoptive parents who delegate quality standards of life to the adopted child. Throughout their
interview, the couple has portrayed a robust psychological strength that is likely to offer a
compassionate care for the infant through their strong relationship in marriage. Despite the
challenges that are a result of differences in their interests, the couple has stood out above their
differences and maintained a strong bond. Additionally, the couple fulfils the following
recommendations of an adoptive parent(s) in Australia from the assessment.
 Both the parents are above the 21 years of age thus legible for adoption.
 The couple has stable physical and medical requirements as part of the requirements for an
adoptive parent.
 From the assessment, the couple has displayed a robust emotional health, which is
incredibly essential for prospective adoptive guardians (Okely et al., 2017, p.869).
 Concisely, the couple has shown no record of violence in the 10-year marriage, which
projects the capability of childcare free from social, mental, and physical abuses in addition
to a clean criminal record.
 The partners are financially stable from the assessment due to their careers, which will
enable them to raise an adopted child without the struggle as a core requirement.

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 Additionally, the couple has resided in Darwin for a long time indicating that they are a
settled family and can take care of the child without inconveniences of moving from place to
place (Kirby, 2015, pp.3200-3212).

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1.
2.
3.
________________________________ ______________________
Student Name and Signature Date
Appendix

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PSY4406 PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION
Part B: Appendix of Assessment Tools
The semi-structured interview
The semi-structured psychological interviews are preferred for use in this assessment due to their
flexibility nature in obtaining responses from the respondents (Kallio, Pietila, Johnson, and
Kangasniemi, 2016, pp.2954-2965). Using this technique in collecting the qualitative data ensures
that the interviewer remains constrained to the aims and objectives of the assessment. However, the
flexible nature of the structured interviews enables the interviewer to go out of scope to collect a
piece of information that might be relevant in the assessment but not captured among the questions.
Concisely, the semi-structured interview will provide a chance to the respondent to go a step further
in expressing themselves without the restrictions observed in the structured interviews as elaborated
by (Yuksel, 2017, pp.376-378). Furthermore, the semi-structured questions create a good
relationship between the interviewer and the respondent thus leading more sincere responses free
from any potential biases, which are acknowledged in the studies of (Dixon, 2015).
The Mini-IPIP, 20-item scale
The technique entails a series of 20 questions aimed at addressing the big-five higher-order
personality traits, which are the Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Intellect/Imagination, Extraversion,
and Conscientiousness. However, the comments are clustered on a scale of five marks each
whereby some questions that are negatively worded are reversed to obtain the overall score in the
totals. Out of the 20 comments, the reversed questions are six to ten and from fifteen to twenty. The
results obtained will be aligned against each factor to determine the existence of the factor in the
respondent. Additionally, the results from the test can be analysed using percentiles, quartiles, and
the correlation analysis to determine the relationship between the variables. The use of regression,
analysis of variance (ANOVA) can also be used to draw the relationship between the participants’
scores. The 20-item scale is useful in determining the suitability of the couples in adopting the
infant as it breaks down their personality, which can be used by the interviewer to establish the
baseline for qualification of the couples or partners.

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RAS, 7-item scale
On the other hand, the Relationship Assessment Scale entails a set of designed questions that
adequately provides a measure to the satisfaction of the partners on different levels in a relationship.
This technique involves seven problems rated on a scale of 1-5 implying that a participant can
cumulatively score seven as the lowest score and 35 the highest score. From the set of the seven
questions, four and seven are reversed during the calculation of the total scores. The reversal is due
to the negated nature in the problems whose ratings are positive when the score is low and negative
when the score is high. Therefore, reversing the two questions inclines with the rest of the problems
for uniformity and minimising confusion in explanations.
From the results of the RAS, different techniques are deployed in drawing various variations and
relationships from the data including and not limited to correlation analyses, linear regression,
calculation of the mean to be rated based on low, medium, and high, estimates of the percentiles,
and the quartiles among the others. By using the results obtained from the mentioned techniques,
the interviewer can conclude whether the respondent is psychologically qualified for the
requirements of an adoptive parent as depicted in the report above. Moreover, the relationship
assessment tool is proven easier to understand and comprehend as well as being time effective in
data collection. The technique is also cost-effective and can be applied to a larger population while
maintaining the high confidentiality of the respondents as required by the ethics that govern the
interviews for adoptive parents (Joe, Raben, and Phillips, 2016, pp.77-86).
References
Baudin, T., De la Croix, D., & Gobbi, P. E. (2015). Fertility and childlessness in the United
States. American Economic Review, 105(6), 1852-82.
Dixon, C. S. (2015). Interviewing adolescent females in qualitative research.

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Falconier, M. K., Nussbeck, F., Bodenmann, G., Schneider, H., & Bradbury, T. (2015). Stress from
daily hassles in couples: Its effects on intradyadic stress, relationship satisfaction, and
physical and psychological well‐being. Journal of marital and family therapy, 41(2), 221-
235.
Hoffmann-Riem, C. (2017). The adopted child: Family life with double parenthood. London.
Routledge.
Joe, K., Raben, F., & Phillips, A. (2016). The ethical issues of survey and market research. Wolf,
C., Joye, D., Smith, TW & Fu, Y. The SAGE Handbook of survey Methodology, 77-86.
Kallio, H., Pietilä, A. M., Johnson, M., & Kangasniemi, M. (2016). Systematic methodological
review: developing a framework for a qualitative semi‐structured interview guide. Journal
of advanced nursing, 72(12), 2954-2965.
Kirby, J. N. (2015). The potential benefits of parenting programs for grandparents:
recommendations and clinical implications. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(11),
3200-3212.
Lowe, P., Lee, E., & Macvarish, J. (2015). Biologising parenting: Neuroscience discourse, English
social and public health policy and understandings of the child. Sociology of Health &
Illness, 37(2), 198-211.
Middlemiss, L. (2017). Marriage, love, caste and kinship support: Lived experiences of the urban
poor in India. London. Routledge.
Okely, A. D., Ghersi, D., Hesketh, K. D., Santos, R., Loughran, S. P., Cliff, D. P., ... & Sherring, J.
(2017). A collaborative approach to adopting/adapting guidelines-The Australian 24-Hour
Movement Guidelines for the early years (Birth to 5 years): an integration of physical
activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep. BMC Public Health, 17(5), 869.
Rotabi, K. S. (2016). Human rights considerations in intercountry adoption: The children and
families of Cambodia and Marshall Islands. In Intercountry Adoption (pp. 81-92). London.
Routledge.

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Yuksel, A. (2017). A critique of “Response Bias” in the tourism, travel and hospitality
research. Tourism Management, 59, 376-384.