Julie A. Suhr, PhD
Suhr is a professor and director of clinical training at Ohio University.
Background
Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?
I completed my PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Iowa in 1994. My area of specialization is clinical neuropsychology; I completed my internship in clinical neuropsychology at Brown University in 1994 and then completed 3 years of postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology in the Department of Neurology at the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa in 1997. From there, I joined the faculty in the Psychology Department at Ohio University, where I currently serve as a professor and director of clinical training of the school’s APA-accredited doctoral program in clinical psychology.
I have extensive journal-editing experience with clinical neuropsychology publications, having served on the editorial boards of The Clinical Neuropsychologist and the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology for many years. I also served as associate editor (2012–2019) and then coeditor in chief (2019–present) of the Journal of Clinical Neuropsychology, a position that I am stepping down from now that I am editor of Psychological Assessment.
Although I am a clinical neuropsychologist, my research lab’s informal motto is “keep the psychology in neuropsychology.” I have taught graduate-level psychological assessment courses for decades, which is perhaps what led Yossi Ben-Porath to invite me to become an associate editor of Psychological Assessment in 2015. This position broadened my journal-editing experience beyond my specialization of clinical neuropsychology. I was humbled to be nominated for Psychological Assessment’s editor position and am excited to take on the role.
Priorities
Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?
I hope that Psychological Assessment will continue to be a strong outlet for research in clinical psychological assessment under my editorship. Although I think research on the assessment and diagnosis of psychopathology and transdiagnostic constructs in psychopathology, clinical health assessment, cognitive and neuropsychological assessment, forensic assessment, multicultural assessment, and clinical personality assessment will continue to be major areas of focus for the journal, I hope to see more submissions on the assessment process (decision making, clinical judgment); the development, validation, and application of measures and tests of transdiagnostic constructs; and research that is multicultural and multinational, especially work that is collaborative across multiple countries or cultures within the same submission. I also welcome submissions of research focused on psychological assessment in new areas of clinical practice, such as integrated primary care and telehealth.
I also strongly encourage authors to attend to the validity of the data collected in their research, a major research focus for me. A high base rate of noncredible presentation (e.g., in self-reports and behavioral responses) occurs across many clinical populations and in many clinical settings, including in clinical research. Thus, I will pay attention to the degree to which authors address this concern by including well-validated symptom validity or performance validity tests in their research batteries, checking for response biases (e.g., extreme responding, non-content-based carelessness), and removing participants who may be providing unreliable data that can lead to uninterpretable results and inaccurate conclusions.
It is important in psychological assessment research to give appropriate attention to diversity issues. Thus, I want authors to describe in detail the sociodemographic characteristics of their samples and how those characteristics might constrain the generalizability of their findings. At the same time, I encourage authors to be careful when interpreting any study findings related to sociodemographic differences and to consider all possible biopsychosocial contributions to those differences, including how demographic factors may be proxies for other environmental and cultural factors, including bias.
