Book excerpt: Clinical Assessment for Social Workers provides a wide range of standardized assessment tools to give readers greater flexibility in their own practice and research. Incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods, the authors encourage readers to approach assessment as both an art and a science. They advocate for discovering the balance between scientific, evidence-based approaches and the development of personal practice wisdom. The inclusion of specific measures, scales, surveys, and tests and the example applications of each makes this text indispensable across the practice curriculum. The book introduces readers to the foundations of assessment and illustrates the use of various assessment methods with children, adolescents, families, multicultural clients, and multistressed clients. The new edition explores the difference between diagnosis and assessment, with a critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the DSM-5. The authors have also included a number of measures available in the public domain for the use of students and clinicians.