This week in abnormal psychology I had my first exam that covered information from the chapters in the textbook and information covered in class. One thing that was covered on the exam that I believe is important in the field of psychology was information about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is necessary to have knowledge of in the process of clinical assessment. Clinical assessment is the evaluation and information gathering of psychological, social and biological factors in a person that might possibly have a psychological disorder. A diagnosis is the process of finding out if a particular problem an individual has meets the criteria of a specific disorder that could be found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Three important factors that determine the value of assessment are reliability, validity and standardization. Reliability is important because it would prove that a diagnosis is truly accurate; validity is important in understanding how much a specific technique or test is designed to measure and standardization is the process of creating certain norms and requirements for a measurement technique or test to make sure of its accuracy in different situations. Clinical assessment consist of a clinical interview and manual status exams. I think that the exam covered a lot of important information such as understanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Assessment Manual and other psychology theories that I can further go over if I was not completely accurate about on the exam.