Name: Arizo, John Nicole M.

Subject: Psychological Assessment

CYS: Bachelor of Science in Psychology 3rd Year – B

Culture and Assessment

Culture
 “The socially transmitted behavior patterns, beliefs, and products of work of a particular
population, community, or group of people” (Cohen, 1994, p. 5).

 Culture teaches specific rituals to be performed at birth, marriage, death, and other momentous occasions.
 Culture imparts much about what is to be valued or prized as well as what is to be rejected or despised.
 Culture teaches a point of view about what it means to be born of one or another gender, race, or ethnic
background.
 Culture teaches us something about what we can expect from other people and what we can expect from
ourselves.

Evolving Interest in Culture-Related Issues

Soon after Alfred Binet introduced intelligence testing in France, the U.S. Public Health Service began using such
tests to measure the intelligence of people seeking to immigrate to the United State.
Henry H. Goddard
 He highly adopted the instrumental in getting Binet’s test for use in various settings in the United States.
 the chief researcher assigned to the project
 Goddard (1913) used interpreters in test administration, employed a bilingual psychologist, and administered
mental tests to selected immigrants who appeared mentally retarded to trained observers.
 “Mental Tests and the Immigrant” – titled paper in study about Jews, Hungarians, Italians, and Russians.
 In reality, the findings were largely the result of using a translated Binet test that overestimated mental
deficiency in native English-speaking populations, let alone immigrant populations (Terman, 1916).

Culture-specific tests
 tests designed for use with people from one culture but not from another, soon began to appear on the scene.
 The 1937 revision of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, which enjoyed widespread use until it was
revised in 1960, included no minority children in the research that went into its formulation.
 Wechsler Bellevue Intelligence Scale, forerunner of a widely used measure of adult development. Although
“a large number” of Blacks had, in fact, been tested (Wechsler, 1944), that data had been omitted from the
final test manual because the test developers “did not feel that norms derived by mixing the populations could
be interpreted without special provisos and reservations.” Hence, Wechsler (1944) stated at the outset that the
Wechsler-Bellevue norms could not be used for “the colored populations of the United States.”
 In like fashion, the inaugural edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), first
published in 1949 and not revised until 1974, contained no minority children in its development.

Some Issues Regarding Culture and Assessment

Communication
 the transmission of information.
 Verbal and Non – Verbal communication

Verbal Communication
 Language, the means by which information is communicated, is a key yet sometimes overlooked variable in
the assessment process.

Non – Verbal Communication

 Facial expressions, finger and hand signs, and shifts in one’s position in space may all convey messages. Of
course, the messages conveyed by such body language may be different from culture to culture.
  thoughts on “the first chance actions” of a patient during a therapy session, Sigmund Freud believed he
could tell much about motivation from nonverbal behavior:

The first . . . chance actions of the patient . . . will betray one of the governing complexes of the neurosis. . . .
A young girl . . . hurriedly pulls the hem of her skirt over her exposed ankle; she has betrayed the kernel of
what analysis will discover later; her narcissistic pride in her bodily beauty and her tendencies to
exhibitionism. (Freud, 1913/1959,p. 359)

Tests and Group Membership

 Tests and other evaluative measures administered in vocational, education, counseling, and other settings
leave little doubt that people differ from one another on an individual basis and also from group to group on a
collective basis. What happens when groups systematically differ in terms of scores on a particular test? The
answer, in a word, is conflict.

Psychology, tests, and public policy

Few people would object to using psychological tests in academic and applied contexts that obviously benefit human
welfare. Then again, few people are aware of the everyday use of psychological tests in such ways. More typically,
members of the general public become acquainted with the use of psychological tests in high-profile contexts, such as
when an individual or a group has a great deal to gain or to lose as a result of a test score. In such situations, tests and
other tools of assessment are portrayed as instruments that can have a momentous and immediate impact on one’s life.
In such situations, tests may be perceived by the everyday person as tools used to deny people things they very much
want or need. Denial of educational advancement, job opportunity, parole, or custody are some of the more threatening
consequences that the public may associate with psychological tests and assessment procedures.
Members of the public call upon government policy makers to protect them from perceived threats. Legislators pass
laws, administrative agencies make regulations, judges hand down rulings, and citizens call for referenda to reflect
and enforce prevailing public policy or to modify it. In the section that follows, we broaden our view of the
assessment enterprise beyond the concerns of the profession to include also the concerns of the public.

References/Additional Resources/Readings

Cohen, R.J., Swerdik, M. E. and Sturman, E., 2013. Psychological Testing and Assessment: An Introduction to Tests
and Measurement, 8th Edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Decena, C. Psychological Assessment Module