Assessment COPY

Question 1

Name several typical contexts in which a formal clinical assessment may occur

Answer 1

Psychiatric setting Medical setting Educational setting Neuropsychological clinic

Question 2

Why do counselors need to know about assessment?

Answer 2

• Basic understanding of clients’ reports
• Constructs measured by the tests used
• How to understand standard scores
• General reasonableness of interpretations and recommendations
• Ethical issues -What types of testing could I refer my client for?

Question 3

mean, median, mode – what they are; when each might be more or less appropriate as a measure of central tendency

Answer 3

mean is a true average (quick & easy), median may be better when looking for a more typical answer; not as affected by extremes in either direction (i.e. income, home price). Mode helpful in determining most common outcome

Question 4

standard deviation (what does it represent?)

Answer 4

average deviation from the mean. In normal curve, 68% will be w/in 1 SD, 95% w/in 2 SD’s

Question 5

what is a percentile score; be able to roughly translate these into z or T scores

Answer 5

% of people in the norming group who had a score at or below your score Imagine Normal curve, can be split into SD’s (-3 - +3even), Z Scores (-4 - + 4, even), or T Scores (10-90 even). Plot percentile score on curve (50 is median), then figure out what T or Z score would be

Question 6

shapes of curves … what types of situations/data would lead to a positively skewed distribution, negatively skewed distribution, bimodal, normal

Answer 6

Bimodal- 2 populations, a missing variable (SES on life expectancy curve) Positive Skew- bottom heavy; a few scores trail off to rt (i.e. income) Negative Skew- top heavy; a few scores trail off to lt (easy test)

Question 7

know how positively and negatively skewed curves affect mean, median, and mode

Answer 7

mode will always be high point on curve, but median and mean will be dragged towards the tail (mean gets pulled further than median because of extreme values)

Question 8

Reliability: what it is; ways to assess; when each type of reliability is/is not appropriate

Answer 8

-Consistency/dependability of a measurement procedure or test -necessary but not sufficient for validity -Types: test-retest, internal consistency, parallel forms (compare to alternate version of test), interrater reliability

Question 9

Be able to explain what Cronbach’s alpha is (don’t worry about Kuder-Richardson or Spearman-Brown)

Answer 9

when scoring is non-dichotomous, Cronbach’s Alpha can be used to compare each answer to the mean and measure variance, telling us the reliability of the test Cronbach’s Alpha assesses internal consistency by averaging all possible split-half reliabilities

Question 10

Test scores include “truth” + error – what are common sources of error in test scores?

Answer 10

test taker (transient states) Context (Modivation, situation, recording errors) Test- (ambiguous questions, long = fatigue effects)

Question 11

What is the relation of true variance, error variance, and reliability?

Answer 11

True variance is the amount of variance that occurs naturally, error variance is due to error (context, test-taker error, test error). A reliability coefficient (closer to 1 is better) estimates the variance between the true score and the observed score True Variance/(True + Error Variance) = Reliability Coefficient

Question 12

What the standard error of measurement actually represents.

Answer 12

a type of SD that measures variation in an individual, not a group

Question 13

Be able to explain what a confidence interval is – how you interpret it

Answer 13

level of confidence that test score = true ability True score = observed score + error, so we can be 90% confident based on test reliability score, mean and SD that TS is within X # of points from the observed score.

Question 14

What is meant by validity?

Answer 14

are we measuring the construct that we are intending to measure? Reliability is Neccessary but not Sufficient for Validity

Question 15

What are several types of evidence that could support the validity of a test?

Answer 15

CCCDR

content- am I testing all relevant material & nothing else?

criterion- predictive/concurrent- predicts future of current behavior

convergent- correlates with other instruments that measure the same construct

discriminant- does not correlate with instruments it should not response

process- do test takers interpret it the way you want?