The Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP-200) is a psychological test for personality diagnosis and clinical case formulation, developed by psychologists Jonathan Shedler and Drew Westen.
Because SWAP-200 is completed by the clinician, it may be argued that diagnostic findings depend less upon the accuracy of information people disclose about themselves and that test results are harder to fake relative to self-assessments (though a person being assessed could still have presented their self in a particular way so as to change how they are perceived).
SWAP-200 is used by clinical practitioners to identify core psychological issues to address in psychotherapy, for personality disorder diagnosis, by forensic examiners, and by agencies of the United States federal government for assessment of personnel for sensitive positions such as those requiring high-level security clearances.
The score profiles provide: The National Security Edition of SWAP-200, developed in collaboration with agencies of the United States federal government, includes the Dispositional Indicators of Risk Exposure (DIRE) scale for security risk assessment, developed to assess the potential for high-risk or destructive behavior among personnel employed in, or being evaluated for, sensitive positions such as those requiring access to classified information.
The scales show high convergent validity with a wide range of criterion variables including genetic history variables (e.g., psychosis and substance abuse in first- and second-degree biological relatives), developmental history variables (e.g., childhood physical abuse, sexual abuse, truancy, school-related problems), life events (psychiatric hospitalizations, suicide attempts, arrests, criminal violence, domestic violence), measures of occupational functioning, measures of social and interpersonal functioning, global adaptive functioning, response to mental health treatment, and other criterion measures.