Dr. Jeremy Sharp (01:31)
Hey folks, welcome back to the Testing Psychologist podcast. As you can see from the title, we’re talking about report writing again today. This is one of the most important things that we do, maybe the most important thing that we do, and there’s a lot to be said about report writing. So today’s episode is a little bit of a twist on the common discussions of report writing. And the reason for that is because I utilized AI to
Go back and review reports from our practice over the last several months and specifically use it to review a lot of my own edits in these reports. So this is a combination of reports from myself and other clinicians in our practice, and use the AI to identify the five most common mistakes.
That we continue to make in our report writing despite our best intentions. And I’m gonna talk about each of those mistakes. I’m gonna talk about why they are actually mistakes, and then I’m gonna talk about how to fix them. My guess is that there’s gonna be a lot of overlap between what we’re doing and what many of you might be doing in your own reports. So I think there’s a lot to take away from this episode, of course, as usual. And I hope that you stick around and listen to the full episode.
Let’s see, before we transition to the full conversation today, what is today? This episode’s gonna be released, I think, in May. And there should still be some spots in crafted practice for this summer. So a lot of people ask, what is crafted practice all about? Why would I consider this? And I think ultimately it comes down to you know, connection, to finding other people who really understand what you are going through.
With your life and with your practice and what it means to be a private practice owner as a testing psychologist, both from the business aspect but also from the personal aspect. So I’ve seen so much connection over the years around just being a mother and running a business and how to balance family and business life and responsibilities and what it means to be the primary breadwinner in your family and the pressure that that brings with it.
And especially all this, you know, kind of mixed together in this phenomenon that we don’t get a lot of business training in our field. And so we’re just kind of winging it. And to be among a group of folks who identify with that, connect with that has been really powerful. And then of course, on top of that, there’s the the actual learning that happens and the support that you get and the guidance and the coaching and you know, some ways to actually solve the problems that you might be running into in your business. So
lots to take away. If you’re looking for a retreat this summer, I mean, it is a retreat. It’s kind of an anti-conference. If you’re looking for a retreat experience where you still get to do a lot of work on your business and connect with some pretty amazing folks, then check it out. It’s the testingpsychologist.com slash crafted practice, and you can talk with me on the phone, see if it’s a good fit, or register if you are ready to take the leap.
All right, let’s transition to this discussion of the five most common mistakes that we are personally making in my practice.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (04:43)
Okay, everybody, let’s jump into this discussion. I know you’re all eagerly awaiting this disclosure of the five most common mistakes that we’re making in our practice. so this comes from many clinicians. Like I said, it’s kind of an aggregate. I reviewed a bunch of reports, including my own. And that’s the I think an acknowledgement right off the bat that this is an ongoing process. So I’ve been talking about different report writing strategies and
Writing more readable reports for a long, long time, at least seven years now. And it’s an ongoing process as a work in progress. So I guess I’m saying that just to like normalize or validate. If you are finding yourself like having a hard time transitioning your report style or making different changes or updates, totally normal. Totally normal.
So, okay, we all know like kind of the main problems with reports. they’re typically like written at a way higher reading level than our audience. They’re pretty dense, they can be overly technical. they put the least important information first instead of last. And we hit people with way too much information then they can actually take in and process. Okay, so a lot of these.
Concerns, I think, center around those main complaints and problems with reports. All right, so mistake number one: the jargon avalanche. All right, now we have worked pretty hard to lower the reading level in our reports over the years. All right, we’re shooting for about an eighth-grade reading level. more typically, we will fall around the 10th grade.
Reading level, give or take. All right. So I found it really, really tough to actually get down to an eighth grade reading level. why eighth grade, by the way, because this is the average reading level of you know, a typical US citizen. So we’re shooting for eighth grade, we typically land around 10th grade, give or take, but we’re still using a lot of jargon here and there in the reports. So just examples that you might recognize: terms like psychomotor processing speed.
executive dysfunction, phonological loop. You know, these phrases are pretty common for us, but they immediately spike the reading level to a postgraduate level and it kind of alienates most of our readers, including parents and teachers and clients. So why is this important? Because when you spike the reading level, that increases the cognitive load and then quickly triggers cognitive fatigue. So
When a parent or educator hits like three unfamiliar words in a sentence, they have a much higher likelihood of not absorbing the information or the meaning. And instead they kind of focus entirely on trying to decode the words or just skip them entirely, which disrupts the narrative flow of the evaluation. So, how do we combat this? I think of this as something like a so what test. Okay, so what question mark.
So if you you if you do use a technical term, then follow it with an immediate real world translation that explains the functional impact. All right. So let me bring this to life. And this is going to be the format for each of these five mistakes. I’m going to outline the problem, what it is, why it’s a problem, talk about best practice, and then give an kind of a case illustration for each one. So what does this look like? Traditional approach might be something like, and this is like pretty heavy. This is
Not necessarily representative of one of our reports, but mini reports. So it might say something like first names neurocognitive profile is characterized by a statistically significant issue in psychomotor processing speed and a concomitant deficit in the central executive component of working memory, as evidenced by lowered performance on timed graphomotor tasks. Nobody knows what any of that means. So the recommended shift for
That particular statement would be first name processes information slowly when she has to write by hand. She also struggles with working memory, which means it’s hard for her to hold multiple pieces of information in her mind at the same time. Huge, huge difference. The reason why this works is because it strips out kind of the academic fluff and defines the functional impact, which is what people actually care about, and tells the reader exactly what the profile data looks like.
In real life. Okay. So that is problem number one that got identified in our reports is you know, throwing in jargon where we didn’t need to, or throwing in jargon without a real world explanation of what it actually means. So let’s move to problem number two: talking about data or tests versus skills and abilities. So the problem here is, you know.
I think a common pattern that a lot of us were trained on is to organize reports by specific test names, like where we go through and just report the waste results or the WISC results or the Wyatt or the DKAFS results, rather than by functional domains like attention or memory or language, things like that. But even within that, listing results or scores or statistics versus skills and abilities and real-world impact.
Why is this important? because clinical consensus, I think, would highlight that a teacher has no idea what well, most teachers anyway, most teachers have no idea what the block design subtest is, nor do they particularly care. When reports are structured strictly around the test battery and talks about results and impact via test names and descriptions.
The reader is forced to do a lot of heavy lifting in in terms of like figuring out what these tests are and what they mean, and then of course, like what the scores mean. So that introduces a really heavy cognitive load for the reader and one that is pretty difficult to overcome, to be honest, because in what world are most of our readers gonna go do the research to figure out what our test names mean and what they’re measuring? And then of course translate it into.
Layman’s terms. So I talk with my trainees specifically, like my interns and postdocs, quite a bit about this idea of writing about abilities or skills, not tests. And so this is really kind of bringing that principle to life. So what do we do? We can implement implement that domain-based structuring. I think that helps. If you do want to report results, you can go domain by domain instead of test by test. So
That kind of involves banning specific test names from you know report headers. And then within that, don’t report any scores or even percentiles. I even to some degree stray away from ranges, right? And use more layperson language around, you know, first name did really well at this, or first name really had a hard time with this. So we’re
Moving more toward functional real world language and real-world kind of behavioral takeaways rather than like the test metrics. Okay, so let’s bring this to life a little bit more. here is more of a traditional approach: waste for and whims for results. On the waste for digit span subtest, first name obtained a scaled score of six. On the spatial span subtest of the WIMS 4, his scaled score was seven.
This indicates a standard score in the borderline range for auditory, verbal, and visual spatial short-term storage capacity. Womp womp. Here’s the recommended shift organized by domain and skill or ability. Attention and memory is the domain now. First name struggles to hold on to information in the short term, whether he hears it or sees it. In class, it’s funny, we’re using adult measures, but it talks about going, you know, in class. In class, he will likely forget.
A multi step instruction right after hearing it. At home, he needs visual reminders like checklists because his brain quickly drops unwritten details. Way different. Way different.
All right, let’s transition to problem number three. Again, these are all pulled from reports in our practice. These are the five most common mistakes. number three is recommend giving a recommendation avalanche and lack of triage. What does this mean? So many evaluation reports will present kind of like a massive, unprioritized laundry list of 25 or more recommendations immediately following the case conceptualization.
Why is this a problem? Because when everything is labeled as important or just underheading like recommendations, nothing is actually treated as important. families look at, you know, two, three, four pages of recommendations and tend to see them more as tasks more than anything else, tasks or to-dos, and they kind of immediately experience executive overload because of the avalanche of recommendations.
the report then often gets like filed away in a drawer because taking those first steps just feel impossible for many clients who are already dealing with a pretty overloaded system.
So, what is best practice here? Well, research would suggest that individuals implement somewhere between two and three recommendations from our report, if we’re lucky. What do we do with this? Well, that feels like not very many recommendations. And I think for many of us, if we were to just offer two or three recommendations, it would feel like we are kind of shortchanging the family. because, you know, it’s
heavily built into our our ethos that quality equals quantity. And if we’re not offering 10, 12, 15, 20, you know, comprehensive, quote unquote comprehensive recommendations, then what are we even giving to this family? So quantity is masquerading as quality. So if we’re operating on this rule that two to three recommendations is best practice, it kind of makes you
structure your eval or your recommendations a little bit differently in the document. So we, for example, have transitioned over into you know splitting things into main recommendations, which is the top three to five high impact, most immediate interventions. And then we put the rest of the recommendations in the appendix and frame them as kind of nice to do, but certainly not necessary or most important. So you move that kind of comprehensive list to a full recommendations appendix for
people who may actually be interested in them. Now, even separating the recommendations into main recommendations and full recommendations, we were still experiencing some like quantity creep in the main recommendations where it started out, you know, we’d offer three to five recommendations, but then those recommendations would have a couple bullet points underneath them. And before you know it, you know, it started to look more and more just like a, you know, laundry list of
10, 12, 15 recommendations. The other component is that you can organize the recommendations into environments or setting. So it might be like medical and home and school or something like that. Or it could be work and home for an adult. So we’ll bring this to life a little bit more with a case illustration. So traditional approach might be offering like a mixed list containing things like
Extended time on tests and noise canceling headphones, CBT for anxiety, graphic organizers, occupational therapy, morning check-ins, fidget tools, slanted desk surfaces, visual schedules, all the things, just like listed in this long list. Now, what could we do instead? We can triage the top three highest impact recommendations and make them very pointed. So might be like number one, pursue executive function coaching.
Spoke focus specifically on initiation and time management strategies within this coaching. Number two, implement a 504 plan with extra time. Provide 25% extended time on all tests to reduce anxiety. Number three, initiate cognitive behavioral therapy with a target of school-related performance anxiety. Three, high-impact, tailored recommendations with
specific ideas even within those already targeted recommendations. And then you can just put a clear note at the bottom of the main recommendations section that says, hey, if you want the full list of recommendations, go to X appendix where you can find the full list of recommendations.
All right, problem number four that emerged in our reports. deficit first and patholog pathologizing language.
This was surprising. we, I feel like, have worked pretty hard to be more affirming in our reports and use language that’s not deficit-based. So this is a little bit of a slap in the face to see this pop up. So the problem here is that you know, many reports will frequently frame a client’s profile through a lens of unintentional, you know, brokenness and end up relying kind of heavily on words like.
Failed to or suffered from, or deficient, or impaired, or disorder, things like that. And these words make a difference, right? They can subtly and not so subtly shape the impression that people take away from your reports. Pathologizing language creates immediate resistance in the reader. I think we know this. So parents can become defensive, clients, especially adolescents and adults, reading their own reports.
can internalize a sense of like inherent brokenness rather than understanding how the brain actually processes information. Now, I’m not saying that you have to move into a completely, you know, quote unquote strengths based report where you’re just being overly like Pollyanna or sunshiney or whatever, but do be mindful of the language that you’re using.
So, best practice, you know, if you can adopt kind of an affirming language framework that is helpful. So, you want to shift the focus from, you know, describing a person’s defects to describing their specific styles and environmental support needs, things like that. So, let’s do a little case illustration here. The traditional approach might be: first name failed to demonstrate age-appropriate executive functioning. He suffers from severe oppositional behavior.
Secondary to his ADHD impairment and exhibits defective impulse control. All right, that’s pretty dramatic, right? I don’t know if I’ve ever used the word defective in a report, but you get the gist here. So what’s a recommended shift? All right. First name has a brain that’s wired for high stimulation and fast pacing. When he’s understimulated or overwhelmed, his executive functioning drops. In these moments, he uses defiant behaviors to protect himself or regain control.
He needs external structures to help his brain pause before acting. I mean, the difference between those two is vast, right? That second one is just so much more, and it’s not like overly affirming. It’s just a different way of describing it’s you know, using more of an affirming language lens versus a deficit-based lens.
So the framing, you know, in the second example shifts that clinical focus away from an inherent like character deficit to a mismatch between that person’s nervous system and their environment.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:30)
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Dr. Jeremy Sharp (22:37)
Okay, drawing to the last point here. The last problem that showed up is what what the system called. I’m not sure if I would call it this, but the system AI, the AI review called it defensive hedging and passive voice. Passive voice, I think we know, but defensive hedging is really referring to that under, let’s see, how would I describe it? Like being underconfident.
Or less confident in your wording, and then that obscuring the conclusions and meaning that you’re trying to trans transmit. So a lot of psychologists overuse passive voice and like heavy hedging in their phrasing to avoid making a definitive diagnostic statement or definitive conclusions in the report. Now, this comes with maybe time and expertise and experience and confidence and all those things. And I have seen this kind of language in myself and in our licensed clinicians as well.
So a perfect example of this, again, that’s dramatized just a little bit, but I think is pretty close to home, is you know, something like it would appear that it might be possible that the client exhibits characteristics consistent with whatever. Okay. So if you count the number of hedging phrases in that sentence, it’s several. Why is this a problem? Because it creates dense
Clunky sentences that kind of destroy the narrative flow of your report and just lower the overall readability of the document. Additionally, it kind of obscures your findings. I don’t know. I think opinion would suggest that this makes it makes us sound a lot more unsure of our conclusions and our findings, which severely undermines the reader’s trust in the clinical conclusion.
So I think that’s probably the biggest thing. It just makes the report sound murky or mushy, something like that. All right, so what do we do? Best practice would suggest that we own the data by using direct, active verbs, and language. If the clinical data shows a clear pattern, the report should state it plainly and authoritatively. So here’s our case illustration. Traditional approach, such as
That’s wordy and uncertain. It would appear to be the case that a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder might be reasonably considered, as it was observed by this examiner that the client manifested a presentation that could be interpreted as being consistent with qualitative impairments in social communication. Wow. Okay, again, a little dramatic, but probably not that far off from many of our writing styles. So here’s a recommended shift.
The evaluation confirms a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. First name so shows a clear, consistent pattern of differences in how she communicates, processes sensory input, and connects with peers. All right. Pretty straightforward, much more definitive. And I feel like I would trust this psychologist a lot more. I think it also helps personalize the report. When we put hedging language, it is it also
you know, communicates that these characteristics might apply to that person. they could apply to anyone. And when we use more direct, active language, it helps personalize the report, which I think is what we are going for with with our work. So this approach, you know, eliminates the linguistic insurance policy, I guess, that a lot of us put into to our text. It owns the clinical data, it establishes professional authority.
And it cuts the word count in half most of the time to actually maximize the
Okay, let’s wrap this up. So the five problems that emerged most commonly in our practice were using jargon, even in a report that’s generally at a pretty good reading level, we’ll insert these phrases that are jargony to describe, mostly clinical constructs. dumping data or test names versus just describing skills and abilities or domains.
Giving a laundry list of recommendations that are not triaged or organized appropriately, using deficit first or pathologizing language, even unintentionally, you know, kind of sneaks in. And then defensive hedging and passive voice. These are the five common mistakes that showed up in our reports. And again, I want to say this many, many times. the these included my own reports. So I’m not throwing my clinicians or anybody else under the bus here. This I’m
Including myself just as much in this analysis. So let’s see, you can take this, you can do whatever you want with it, honestly. But if you want to implement some of these changes, good way to do that is go check out the transcript for the exact wording for some of these examples. And I will actually do my best to create a document and put it in the show notes just to just to bring these illustrations to life a little bit.
And if you enjoyed this discussion, this is taken directly, almost I wouldn’t say verbatim, but pretty close from a discussion that we had in the Kraft membership community. So this is my membership community. We meet twice a month, every other week, for a live QA call. And we have a quarterly focus every quarter where we dive deep into a specific topic. So in 2026, Q1, it was Financial Foundations.
right now we’re talking about report writing. And this was a discussion that happened very recently in the community. And the hope with the community is that it’s rich, it is applied, it creates some accountability and gives you a place to actually implement some of the things that you hear on this podcast. So if that looks interesting, the next enrollment opens, let’s see, in late June 2026. And
Is open for a week and then we close again for six months to let the cohorts get going and and gel. So go check it out. It’s the testingpsychologist.com slash craft. Not to be confused with crafted practice, which is my in-person retreat that I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast. So this is the danger of continuity and branding. You know, I’ve got crafted practice, I’ve got the craft, the membership community.
There’s an option for everybody, it just depends what you what you need at that point in time. But go check out if it sounds interesting.
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