Reflection Paper in Advanced Psych Assessment

Maximum Page: 4, Times New Roman 12, Single Space

Answer the following questions completely. Make your discussions concise; i.e. brief
but comprehensive.

1. Paths of assessment. Give a concrete example, that which was not discussed in
class, to illustrate all 3 paths.

Top Down Path/ Empirical Cycle

The Edward Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) is a self-report measure
designed to assess 15 manifest needs of Murray psychogenic needs. It is
developed from the theory of Murray and assess the different psychogenic needs
of an individual

Centrifugal Path
The Male Role Norms Scale (MRNS) was developed using items from an older
measure. Data from college men were submitted to principal components analysis
on the basis of which the 26-item MRNS was formed to assess status, toughness,
and antifemininity norms. Subsequent confirmatory factor analyses of data from
U.S. college men indicated the presence of four factors: Tough Image, Violent
Toughness, Status/Rationality, and Antifemininity.

Bottom-up Path
The thematic apperception test is based on the projective hypothesis. This test was
developed by Henry Murray and Christiana Morgan. The test is designed to
provide clues about person’s inner life through story telling. Later on, the themes
of thematic apperception test provide information and data about the different
psychogenic needs of an individual.

2. A professional who does not have a background in Psychology asks you about
assessment of human behavior in Psychology. As Psychology is a theoretical
field, explain to this professional the theoretical orientations commonly used in
the assessment of human behavior. Use your own words and concepts. Do not cut
and paste from the notes.

There are three basic orientations in which a behavior can be explained,

predicted and categorized. These orientations in layman’s term are somehow
similar with a perspective by which we can view the behavior of a person in a
different angle leading to a comprehensive description of his own behavior. As
such, the three orientations are the individual differences, development, and social
and physical context. If we would want to know more about one’s behavior then
the first thing that we may do is to look for a behavior that is different from
ourselves. This leads us to the individual differences orientation by which
different behavior can be clustered in a certain description. We tend to compare
 ourselves with other people so we may know ourselves better whether we belong
to a group or we are simply different from the group. By doing comparison, we
can now categorize behavior and this may lead us to the depiction of the person’s
characteristics. In addition to comparison, the behavior of a person can be viewed
in developmental milestone by which a child’s performance in one task may be
seen poorly when compared to an adult but excellently when he is compared with
another child. This development orientation helps us to view the person from the
past, present and in future since a person change through time which is
observable. Hence, we may conclude that developmental stage of where the
person is currently categorized is important in drawing out accurate description of
one’s behavior. Lastly the behavior of a person can be viewed through his own
social and physical context. We know that the environment by which the person
was raised has an influence to his behavior. A person in different socio-economic
status may behave differently as one is exposed to an environment which is
different from other people. Thus, these three orientations help us to explain the
behavior of a person by categorizing it, looking on the developmental milestone,
and by considering the environment of the person.

3. Planning the development of a Psychological Test allows the developer a chance

to view in advance the complete sequence of operations until the final goal is
completed in full. An aspect of which, according to Thorndike is indicating the
plan for tryout of items, for analyzing the tryout data, and for selecting the items
to be included in the final test. Discuss all related issues and decisions that need
to be accomplished at this stage of test development.

This stage of test development is crucial for the reason that the ability of
the test items or the test itself to distinguish individuals who may likely have the
construct or latent attribute being assessed by the test may be established. In other
words, this stage allows us to retrieve the necessary information for which the test
may be viewed later as reliable for its capability to assess the specific construct of
a person. In order to establish a reliable and valid test items or test, we must look
for these necessary issues: The age or grade level for which the test will be tried
out, the desired size of tryout sample, the special sub-groups, the length and time
of the test, and the test score for which to be used as a criterion against which
each item is evaluated.

As such, we have to consider the population of the test tryout for which
the test is intended for. To ensure the generalizability of the test, we have to
consider the sample from population, age ranges, and the grade level. As much as
possible it is also recommended to tryout the test to a diverse group so that no
specific attribute of a group may hugely influence the scores of the test. In
addition, the size of the sample from population must be larger enough to ensure
stable indices of item difficulty and item discrimination. Moreover, to ensure that
no specific attribute may influence the result of the test tryout, we have to
consider the special subgroups of the sample for which the test is intended for.
These special subgroups are the gender, culture, race, and socio-economic status.
 For us to secure that the person scores on the test is a reflection of a specific
attribute, we have to ensure that he answered all the test items and none of it
where skipped. This leads us to the issue of length of the test and the time
constraints given to the person. Lastly, we have to decide for what score will be
used as the criterion to evaluate the items that will be included in the final
instrument. All of these issues have to be addressed in order for us to develop a
test that is both reliable and vaild.

4. Modern Test Theory over Classical Test Theory. Which is better? Defend your
answer.

In reality, modern test theory and classical test theory have some
shortcomings but both of them have their own advantages such as both test
theories offer a way to compute and establish the reliability of the test. to
determine which of the test theory is better, it is compulsory for us to look for the
advantages and disadvantages of both test theory to come up with a clear and
accurate decision of which test theory is better.

The classical test theory provides us information about the reliability of

the whole test through the use of parallel test. Hence, this test theory can be
applied to any measurement, not only in test items. For this reason, many of Test
Manuals report the reliability index and other statistical properties using CTT.
However, there are reports about the failure of the Classical Test Theory to
address some issues. One of which is the inability of the classical test theory to
establish specific pattern for a subject to answer the test. The CTT usually uses
the sum scores and disregard the score for every item which lessen our confidence
to adhere on the idea that the sum of the test score is the accurate score of the
client. In addition, the estimation of reliability in CTT is sensitive for the variance
of the sample. The more homogenous the sample is, the lesser the reliability will
be. Likewise, there is a possibility of regression to the mean for the reason that the
test may incur extreme scores as it uses a parallel test to establish reliability and
that answers of subjects on item cannot be compared separately from the specific
test or questionnaire as it uses sum scores instead of weighted sum scores. Also,
the CTT requires the creation and computation for norm scores to interpret the
scores of an individual. This implies that the score itself of the test has no intrinsic
meaning when it is not compared with the norm. The establishment of norm is
also difficult and costly which makes it disadvantageous for test developer.

On the other hand, the Modern Test Theory or item response theory
provide us information about the items of the test. It allows us to determine the level of
difficulty and the ability of the test item to discriminate higher scorers and lower scorers.
This leads us to a careful deliberation of which test items will be included in our test.
Thus, the test items in modern test theory has intrinsic meaning and that the test is
perceived as reliable for the reason that each of its item has a specific strength for which
the latent ability of the person can be measured. In addition, most of the failure of the
CTT were addressed by the Modern Test theory such as the test ability to discriminate the
latent ability of the subject.

All of these discussions pointed us that the Modern Test Theory is better than
Classical test theory as it addresses the issues of the classical test theory. In addition, the
classical test theory has several disadvantages for which makes the modern test theory
better than it is.

“The best way to finish an unpleasant task is to get started.” ~ Anonymous