Psychological testing & evaluationPsychological Evaluation FAQs
Considering psychological testing? Find answers to common questions about the evaluation process, costs, insurance, diagnostic results, and what to expect at Haven.
The free consultation is a 15-minute video call with Dr. Bethany Harris, who coordinates care at Haven. Your evaluator is Dr. Nikel Rogers-Wood.
Getting started
No. You can ask about an evaluation directly. Many people are referred by a therapist, pediatrician, psychiatrist or school, and those referrals are welcome, but none is required.
You do not need to know before you get in touch. Most people arrive with a question rather than a test request: why reading is still so hard, whether it is ADHD or something else, why several diagnoses never quite fit. The free consultation is for working out what the question is and whether an evaluation can answer it.
The pages on ADHD, learning disabilities and dyslexia, giftedness and diagnostic clarification describe the most common starting points.
Evaluations are offered from age 8 through 64. Outside that range we would rather say so plainly than take a referral we are not set up to answer well, and the administrative team is glad to help identify other options: (813) 438-4701.
Yes. Adults are a substantial part of this service. Many adults seek an evaluation after years of managing, often when responsibilities increase and the strategies that used to work stop working, or after a diagnosis given quickly in adolescence that was never examined. Adult evaluations also frequently involve sorting ADHD from anxiety, depression, trauma and sleep difficulties, which can look similar from the outside.
Yes, from age 8 through adolescence. These evaluations usually include information from school as well as from home, because attention difficulties often present differently in the two settings and the difference itself is informative.
It is a free 15-minute video call with Dr. Bethany Harris, who coordinates care at Haven. You talk through what you are hoping to understand, whether an evaluation looks like the right next step, and the practical side: scheduling, location and how fees work. Nothing is diagnosed on the call, and if something other than an evaluation would serve you better, you will hear that plainly.
The evaluation process
Testing is one part of an evaluation. “Testing” refers to the standardized measures themselves; the evaluation is the whole process: the interview, the history, the records, the observations, the measures, and the interpretation that reconciles them into an answer. A set of scores with no interpretation is not an evaluation, and it is the interpretation that makes the results useful.
- Start with the question. A free 15-minute consultation about what you are hoping to understand, before anything is scheduled. It is enough to tell whether an evaluation looks appropriate, whether a fuller assessment intake should be scheduled, or whether something else, therapy for instance, would be a better next step.
- Intake and history. A clinical interview covering developmental, educational, medical and mental-health history: how the difficulty has developed and what has already been tried.
- Records and collateral information. Previous testing, school reports and relevant medical records, and, where it is clinically useful, information from a parent, teacher or partner.
- Testing. The measures selected for your referral question, often across more than one appointment. What gets administered follows from what is being asked.
- Integration and report. Scoring and interpretation, then the real work: reconciling everything into a written report, with conclusions supported by the assessment findings.
- Feedback and recommendations. A session to go through the findings in plain language and talk through what the recommendations mean and what to do with them.
Testing appointments take place at Haven’s office at 28210 Paseo Drive #190, Suite 255, in Wesley Chapel. Clients travel from Wesley Chapel, Lutz, Land O’ Lakes, Zephyrhills, New Tampa and the wider Tampa Bay area. Directions and the office location.
The intake interview and the feedback session can both be held by video if that suits you better, so for most people the trip to Wesley Chapel is limited to the testing itself. Some other parts of an evaluation can be completed remotely where that is clinically appropriate, where the measure supports it, and where your clinician is authorized to practice in the state you are in. Most testing is administered in person.
It depends on the referral question and the measures it calls for, so it is answered specifically rather than generally. Testing is often scheduled across more than one appointment, and you will be given an expected timeline once the scope of your evaluation is clear.
The timeframe depends on the scope of the evaluation and on any records still to arrive, so it is discussed with you when the evaluation is planned rather than promised in advance here.
Usually any previous testing, school reports or report cards, and relevant medical or mental-health records. Where it is clinically useful, questionnaires or information from a parent, teacher or partner may also be requested, with your permission.
Often, yes. How many depends on the referral question, the measures involved and the person being evaluated; attention and stamina matter, especially for children. The intake and the feedback session are separate appointments, and both can be held by video.
Fees & insurance
Evaluations are offered on a private-pay basis and are not billed as an in-network service. This applies to psychological evaluation specifically: several Haven therapists do participate with insurance plans for therapy, and the fees and insurance page sets out which clinicians take which plans. In-network therapy at Haven does not mean an evaluation is in-network.
Private pay means the scope of an evaluation is set by the question you need answered and agreed with you directly, rather than shaped by an insurer’s authorization process. It also means we can be straightforward with you about cost from the first conversation.
Possibly. Evaluations at Haven are private-pay and payment is made directly to Haven, but we provide a superbill you can submit to a commercial insurance plan for possible out-of-network reimbursement. Coverage for psychological testing varies considerably by plan and reimbursement is not guaranteed, so if reimbursement matters to you, check with your insurer before scheduling.
Yes. A superbill is an itemized statement with the information a commercial plan typically needs to consider an out-of-network claim. Whether and how much your plan reimburses is the plan’s decision.
Yes. Fees depend on the referral question and the scope of testing, so there is no single price, but you will have a written estimate of the fees before testing begins, and you can ask what an evaluation would cost at any point, including before booking anything. If you are uninsured or paying privately, you also have a legal right to a written Good Faith Estimate: your right to a Good Faith Estimate.
It is discussed with you first. If something emerges that would need further testing to answer, the reason and any change in cost are explained before anything more is done: further testing is a conversation before it is ever a charge.
Have a question about your own situation? Ask it in the free consultation.
Diagnoses, reports & results
No, and it should not. Sometimes the findings support a diagnosis clearly. Sometimes they rule one out, which is often just as useful. Sometimes the most accurate answer describes a pattern (a cognitive profile, a set of executive-functioning difficulties, an emotional factor) that does not amount to a diagnostic label but does explain what has been happening and points to what would help.
- An integrated written report, in language you and the people who need it can follow
- Diagnostic conclusions where the findings support them, and a clear account of the picture where they do not
- An explanation of the cognitive, academic and emotional findings, and how they fit together
- Individualized recommendations for home, school or work, and treatment
- A feedback session to talk all of it through
What a report cannot do is make a third party’s decision. Schools, colleges and testing organizations each apply their own criteria, and the recommendations in an evaluation are exactly that.
They can support a request. Haven can provide clinically appropriate documentation and recommendations for schools, college and graduate disability or accessibility offices, and professional and licensing examinations. Each institution applies its own criteria and makes its own decision, so no evaluation can guarantee that a particular accommodation will be approved.
Yes. Intellectual or cognitive ability testing is what most people mean by an IQ test, and it is part of several evaluations here: for gifted program questions, as one half of a psychoeducational evaluation where academic achievement is measured against it, and wherever a cognitive profile informs a broader diagnostic question.
What you receive is not a single number. What is useful is the shape of the profile: where someone is unusually strong, where that strength is not matched, and what that combination tends to look like day to day. Where a score is needed on its own, for a gifted program application for instance, it is included.
Attention problems are produced by a great many things (anxiety, depression, trauma, poor sleep, an undiagnosed learning disorder, an uneven cognitive profile) and more than one can be true at once. No single computerized attention task settles that question. The evaluation brings several sources together: a detailed history of when and where the difficulties show up, information from more than one setting, standardized measures chosen for the question, and close attention to how mood, anxiety, sleep and learning interact. The aim is the explanation that fits all of it.
Often, yes. This is careful differential work, not an attempt to prove or disprove a particular label. The questions often involve genuine overlap between ADHD, anxiety and depressive disorders, trauma, bipolar-spectrum conditions and personality features: distinctions that are legitimately difficult and that change what will be most helpful. The report sets out what the findings support and why, and says plainly when a question cannot be settled.
Specific assessment questions
Yes. Psychoeducational evaluation covers Specific Learning Disorder in reading, written expression and mathematics, including dyslexia and, where indicated, phonological processing. Cognitive ability and academic achievement are assessed together so that the relationship between them is visible. More on the learning disabilities and dyslexia page.
Yes. A learning disorder can involve reading, written expression, mathematics or more than one of them, and the evaluation is shaped by which. Reading concerns focus on word reading, decoding, fluency and comprehension; writing concerns on spelling, grammar and how ideas are organized on the page; mathematics concerns on number sense, calculation and reasoning. Measures are selected for the referral question rather than given as one fixed battery. See reading, writing and mathematics.
No evaluation can promise that. Gifted program eligibility and placement are decided by the school or program under its own criteria. An evaluation reports standardized findings, explains them, and makes recommendations, and where a program asks for a particular score, that score is included.
Yes. High ability and a learning or attention difficulty can exist together, and each can hide the other for years: strengths cover for the difficulty, and the difficulty keeps the strengths from showing. A cognitive evaluation can look at both, so that one is not mistaken for the other.
Not at this time. Haven is not currently offering comprehensive autism diagnostic evaluations, and we would rather say so plainly than take a referral we are not set up to answer well. Where autism is the main question, we are glad to help you identify an appropriately qualified provider in the area: (813) 438-4701.
Raise it in the consultation. Autism-related symptom screening may sometimes be appropriate within a broader evaluation, but screening is not a diagnostic evaluation: it cannot establish or rule out autism, and it does not replace a comprehensive autism evaluation by an appropriately qualified provider. If autism is a serious possibility, we will say so and help you think through whether a specialized autism evaluation should come first, or alongside an evaluation here for other questions such as attention or learning.
We will tell you. Evaluations here cover ages 8 through 64 and the areas on these pages. For anything outside that, including comprehensive autism evaluation, the consultation is still useful, and the administrative team is glad to help identify other options in the area: (813) 438-4701.
Questions about therapy, scheduling or practice-wide policies are answered in the general FAQ.
Still have a question?
Ask it in a free 15-minute consultation. If an evaluation is not the right next step, you will hear that plainly, along with what might be.
