Chapter 2 psychological assessment: a brief retrospective overview

Question 1

Give an overview of the early

origins of Psychological assessment

Answer 1

Astrology: Horoscopes to describe the personality characteristics of individuals and predict what might happen in their lives.
Physiognomy: Attempted to judge a person’s character from the external features of the body, especially the face.
Humorology: the four temperaments 1. introversion/extroversion, 2.emotionally stable/unstable.
Phrenology= “the science of reading peoples heads. believed organs of the brain correspond with various personality characteristics.
Chirology-Palmistry=Palm creases can change, and change related to changes in personality.
Graphology= the study of handwriting. Crystalised gestures can be analyzed. can provide indicators of personality characteristics.

Question 2

The influence of multiculturalism

Answer 2

A need for culturally appropriate measures that were available in the language in which the test taker was most proficient.
Culture free vs culture reduced and culture common.
Focus shifted to cross cultural test adaptation.
Guidelines for the cross cultural adaptation of tests developed by the ITC are the benchmark for cross cultural test adaptation.
New methodologies and statistics to test
equivalence of measures

Question 3

The influence of Multiculturalism continued

Answer 3

Increasingly, non-Western countries both
adapt Westernised measures and develop
their own indigenous measures.
Rapid globalization is increased
multiculturalism, resulting in dilemmas
around which norm group are the most
appropriate and fair to use especially in
multinational organizations.
In such instances, the development of
multinational norms have been suggested.