Brabender and Mihura’s Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Psychological Assessment provides a comprehensive overview of how issues of gender and sexuality can impact both the assessor and the client during psychological assessment. The chapters elegantly weave together reviews of the current literature when it exists—noting where more research is warranted—along with illustrative case studies and vignettes, in order to provide suggestions for how to best interweave what is known into actual practice. This text does an excellent job of balancing the discussion of tools to reduce gender bias with an understanding of how gender- and sex-specific information can better inform assessment. A consistent theme tying the chapters together is that, while sex and gender issues are often not the main issue that brings the client in for psychological assessment, adequately addressing issues of sex and gender can greatly enhance the assessor’s understanding of the client and interpretation of the assessment results.
The introductory chapters, written by the editors, set the stage for the remainder of the book by defining essential terms, presenting a helpful introduction of assessor pitfalls, and noting suggestions for helpful assessor attitudes and behaviors during the different stages of psychological assessment. Several chapters of the book highlight how sex and gender, both that of the assessor and of the client, can interact with psychological assessment and influence specific disorders and traits. These chapters note that while gender nonconforming identities do not in and of themselves indicate underlying psychopathology, a better understanding of the psychological basis of such identities can still greatly inform and enhance treatment of such individuals seeking psychological assessment. The book includes excellent case illustrations and discussion of multi-dimensional gender-based issues such as its intersectionality with race, culture, and development. The final chapters discuss how to integrate the knowledge presented in the book into practice, to better train professionals, and to enhance professionals’ motivation to change their biased thinking and/or behaviors.
Although there is some repetition between chapters, particularly in redefining terms throughout the handbook, each chapter is able to stand alone and to provide unique insight into how gender and sexuality influence assessment. The chapters, while informative and providing unbiased review of the literature, are also quite engaging, particularly the chapters that provide personal examples of the authors, which bolster the academic material presented. This text does not just explain epidemiological information about sex and gender differences in the assessment arena but also convincingly highlights reasons why it is important to further explore gender and sexuality in psychological assessment. Most chapters do assume prior knowledge of the assessment measures and psychopathology, and the book is therefore best suited to clinicians and researchers who are already knowledgeable on the topic but who want to gain better insight into the interplay between sex, gender, and assessment.