PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING

AND ASSESSMENT
QUICKNOTES BY:
Kristine Confesor

PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING AND ASSESSMENT a. School Ability Tests – identify children w/ special
Based on: 2012 Edition book of needs
Kaplan and Saccuzzo b. Achievement Tests – evaluates accomplishments
or the degree of learning that has taken place
c. Diagnostic Tests – tool of assessment used to help
narrow down and identify areas of deficit to be
targeted for intervention
I. Principles 2. Clinical Settings
- Introduction 3. Counseling Settings
- Norms and Basic Statistics for Testing 4. Geriatric Settings
- Correlation and Regression 5. Business and Military Settings
- Reliability
- Validity Types of Tests
- Writing and Evaluating Test Items 1. Individual tests – can be given to only one person at a time
- Test Administration 2. Group tests – more than one person at a time by a single
examiner
II. Applications I. Ability Tests – measure skills in terms of speed, accuracy, or
- Interviewing Techniques both
- Theories of Intelligence and Binet Scales a. Achievement Test - previous learning
- The Wechsler Intelligence Scales: WAIS-IV, WISC-IV, b. Aptitude – potential for learning or acquiring
and WPPSI-III specific skill
- Other individual Tests of Ability in Education and c. Intelligence – person’s general potential to solve
Special Education problems, adapt to changing circumstances, think
- Standardized Tests in Education, Civil Service, and abstractly, and profit from experience.
the Military
- Applications in Clinical and Counseling Settings II. Personality Tests – measure typical behaviour- traits,
- Projective Personality Tests temperaments, and dispositions
- Computers and Basic Psychological Science and a. Structured (objective): provides a self-report
Testing statement to which the person responds “True” or
- Testing in Counseling Psychology “False”, “Yes” or “No”
- Testing in Health Psychology and Health Care b. Projective: provides an ambiguous test stimulus;
- Testing in Industrial and Business Settings response requirements are unclear

III. Issues HISTORICAL, CULTURAL, and LEGAL/ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

-Test Bias Han Dynasty: use of test batteries (two or more tests used in
-Testing and the Law conjunction)
- Ethics and Future of Psychological Testing Ming Dynasty: national multistage testing program involved local and
regional testing centers equipped with special testing booths; series of
tests for public office
1855: British government copied the Chinese system for employee
selection and for its civil service
1883: US government established American Civil Service Commission
PRINCIPLES
Charles Darwin higher forms of life evolved partially because
- Introduction-

of individual differences within a species
Psychological test – educational test or a set of items that are
 Francis Galton: individual differences exist in human sensory
designed to measure characteristics of human beings that pertain
and motor functioning such as reaction time, visual acuity, and
to behaviour.
physical strength.
Psychological Assessment – gathering and integration of
 Karl Pearson: developed the product-moment correlation
psychology-related data for the purpose of making a psychological
technique
evaluation that is accomplished through the use of such tools as
 Wilhelm Max Wundt: formulated a general description of
tests, interviews, case studies, behavioural observation, and
human abilities with respect to variables such as reaction time,
specially designed apparatuses and measurement procedures
perception, and attention span; focused on how people are
o Collaborative – assessor and assesse may work
similar
as “partners” from initial contract through final
 James Mckeen Cattell : coined the term mental test based on
feedback
Galton’s work on individual differences in reaction time.
o Therapeutic – therapeutic self-discovery and new
o Also instrumental in founding the Psychological
understandings are encouraged throughout the
Corporation with a goal for the “advancement of
entire assessment process
psychology and the promotion of the useful
o Dynamic – interactive approach to psychological
applications of psychology.
assessment that usually follows a model of (1)
evaluation, (2) intervention, (3) evaluation
 Charles Spearman: originating the concept of test reliability as
well as building the mathematical framework for the statistics of
Scales – relate raw scores on test items to some defined theoretical or
factor analysis
empirical distribution
 Victor Henri: collaborated with Binet on papers suggesting how
Scoring – process of assigning such evaluative codes or statements to
mental tests could be used to measure higher mental processes
performance on tests, tasks, interviews, or other behaviour
 Emil Kraepelin: early experimenter with the word association
samples.
technique as a formal test
o Cut Score - any reference point, usually
 Light Witmer: little known founder of clinical psychology and
numerical, divided by judgment and used to divide
founded the journal Psychological Clinic having its first article
a set of data into two or more classifications
entitled as “Clinical Psychology”
Who are the parties to a Test?
1. Test Developers and Publishers
2. Test User 20th Century
3. Testtaker  Alfred Binet and Victor Henri: 1895, published several articles
4. Society at large
which they argued for the measurement of abilities such as
memory and social comprehension
Settings
1. Educational Settings

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© CONFESOR2016
 PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING
AND ASSESSMENT
QUICKNOTES BY:
Kristine Confesor

 Binet Simon Scale – 1905, contained 30 items of increasing

difficulty and was designed to identify intellectually subnormal
individuals; concept of mental age was made. SCALES OF MEASUREMENT
 David Weschler, 1939: intelligence was the aggregate or global  Properties
capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, 1. Magnitude – property of moreness. A scale has the
and to deal effectively with the environment property of magnitude if we can say that a particular
o Group Intelligence Test: came into being in the instance of the attribute represents more, less, or equal
US in response to the military’s need for an amounts of the given quantity than does another instance.
efficient method of screening the intellectual 2. Equal Intervals – if the difference between two points at
ability of World War I recruits any place o the scale has the same meaning as the
 Stanford Binet Scale – revision made by Terman on 1916 difference between two other points that differ by the
 WWI- they army requested the assistance of Yerkes, APA same number of scale units.
president to create a committee of distinguished psychologists to 3. Absolute Zero- when nothing of the property being
develop 2 structured group tests of human abilities: They Army measured exists.
Alpha and the Army Beta.
 Achievement Tests: provide multiple choice questions that are Type of Scale Magnitude Equal Absolute 0
standardized on a large sample to produce norms against which Intervals
the results of new examinees can be compared. Nominal No No No
Ordinal Yes No No
Interval Yes Yes No
Ratio Yes Yes Yes
Measurement of Personality
 Personality Tests (1920-1940) – measured presumably stable  Ordinal: IQ Tests
characteristics or traits that theoretically underlie behaviour.  Interval: Temperature on C and F
 Ratio: Kelvin Scale; Yards, Speed
o Traits – relatively enduring dispositions
(tendencies to act, think, or feel in a certain
manner in any given circumstance) that  Frequency Distributions – displays scores on a variable or
distinguish one individual from another.
a measure to reflect how frequently each value was
o Robert S Woodworth – measure of adjustment
obtained.
and emotional stability that could be administered  Positive Skew – relatively few scores fall at the high end of
quickly and efficiently to group of recruits the distribution (e.g. the test was too difficult)
(Personal Data Sheet)  Negative Skew – When relatively few of the scores fall at
o Woodworth Personal Data Sheet – an early the low end of the distribution (e.g. the test was too easy)
structured personality test that assumed that a  Percentile Rank– an expression of the percentage of
test response can be taken at face value people whose score on a test or measure falls below a
o Projective Tests – an individual is assumed to particular raw score, or a converted score that refers to a
“project” onto some ambiguous stimulus his or her percentage of testtakers; contrast with percentage correct
own unique needs, fears, hopes, and motivation.
o Rorschach Inkblot test: highly controversial P = B/N x 100 = percentile rank of Xi
projective test that provided an ambiguous P= percentile rank
stimulus and asked the subject what it might be X,= score of interest
o Thematic Apperception test: projective test B = number of scores below X,
that provided ambiguous pictures and asked N= total number of scores
subjects to make up a story
o Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory  Percentiles – specific scores or points within a distribution;
(MMPI): structured personality test that made no divide the total frequency for a set of observations into
assumptions about the meaning of a test hundredths.
response. Such meaning was to be determined by
empirical research
o 16PF: A structured personality test based on the DESCRIBING DISTRIBUTIONS
statistical procedure of factor analysis 1. Mean – arithmetic average score in a distribution
2. Standard Deviation – approximation of the average deviation
around the mean; square root of variance

√
2
Culture and Assessment
Σ( X – X)
σ=
 Culture– socially transmitted behaviour patterns, beliefs, and N
products of work of a particular population, community, or group
of people
 Henry S Goddard – highly instrumental in getting Binet’s test
adopted for use in various settings in the US who raised 3. Variance – measure of variability equal to the arithmetic mean of
questions about how meaningful such tests are when used with the squares of the differences between the scores in a
people from various cultural language and backgrounds distribution and their mean
 Verbal Communication – language is a key yet sometimes 2
overlooked variable in the assessment process. Σ( X – X )
σ ²=
N
Norms and Basic Statistics for Testing
 Tests– devices used to translate observations into numbers
4. Z Score – transforms data into standardized units that are easier
 Purpose of Statistics
to interpret; difference between a score and the mean, divided
o Descriptive Statistics – are methods used to provide a by the standard deviation
concise description of a collection of quantitative
information
o Inferential Statistics – used to make inferences from
observations of a small group of people known as a sample
to a larger group of individuals known as population.

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© CONFESOR2016
 PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING
AND ASSESSMENT
QUICKNOTES BY:
Kristine Confesor

X,–X 4. Scatterplot – useful in revealing curvilinearity in a relationship

z =¿ ¿
S
- Correlation and Regression
Expression of degree and direction of correspondence between two
thing.
Coefficient of Correlation – numerical index that expresses this
relationship: It tells us the extent to which X and Y are co-related.
 Pearson r –when the relationship is linear and when the two
variables being correlated are continuous
 Coefficient of Determination – indication of how much variance
is shared by the X- and the Y- variables.
 Spearman Rho – rank-order correlation coefficient when sample
size is fewer than 30 and when both sets of measurements are in
ordinal or rank-order form.
GRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS OF CORRELATION
1. Bivariate distribution
2. Scatter Diagram
3. Scattergram
(eyeball guage” of how curved the graphy is
 Regression – analysis of relationships among variables for the
purpose of understanding how one variable may predict another.
 Simple Regression – X (predictor variable); Y (outcome variable);
results in an equation for a regression line.
 Regression Line – line of best fit
 Multiple Regression – takes into account the intercorrelations
among all variables involved; correlation among predictor scores
 Meta-analysis – family of techniques used to statistically combine
information across studies to produce single estimates of the
statistics beig studied
 Culture and Inference
- Reliability
- Validity
- Writing and Evaluating Test Items
- Test Administration

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