PPT 1 Flashcards
Assessment Overall
Some forms of assessment is integral to everything we do
If you don’t accurately understand a problem, you won’t get far addressing the problem
Assessment for Color Blindness
Assessing color blindness without a test
Need a formal assessment to have certainty in a diagnosis
Ex: Colored dot images with numbers
Constructs
Constructs are hypothetical, can’t be touched
- E.g., introverted, anxious, depressed, schizophrenia, bipolar, intellectual disability, gifted, developmentally disabled
- We sometimes create constructs where there are none (ex: EQ, Type A personality)
- We sometimes combine constructs that should be seperate
Goal is to “carve nature at its joins” (Popper)
Constructs
Constructs are hypothetical, can’t be touched
- E.g., introverted, anxious, depressed, schizophrenia, bipolar, intellectual disability, gifted, developmentally disabled
- We sometimes create constructs where there are none (ex: EQ, Type A personality)
- We sometimes combine constructs that should be separate
Goal is to “carve nature at its joins” (Popper)
Testing
Measurement
Definition of testing - “The process of measuring psychologically related variables by means of devices or procedures designed to obtain a sample of behavior”
Used to assess constructs
Key to testing: a sample of behavior
“Tests are tools. In the hands of a fool or an unscrupulous person they become pseudoscientific perversions” (Tyler, 1962)
Assessment
Understand (more broad)
Definition of assessment - “Gathering and integration of psychology-related data for the purpose of making a psychological evaluation, accomplished through the use of tools such as tests, interviews, case studies, behavioral observation, and especially designed apparatuses and measurement procedures”
Assessment - focuses on understanding rather than merely measuring
Why Do Assessments?
- To identify or clarify a problem
- To determine the best environment for a person
- To advance justice
- To aid in matching people to opportunities
- To help a person better understand themselves
- As an effective short term therapeutic intervention
- *To protect against bias/human thinking errors
Human Thinking Errors
Fundamental Attribution Bias - tendency to attribute another’s actions to their character or personality, while their own behavior to external situational factors outside of their control
Others (that are in italics)
- Altering Information
- Confirmation Bias
- Bandwagon Effect
- Distinction Bias
- Just-World Phenomenon
- Hypersensitive Agency Detector
- Dunning-Kruger Effect
- Affective Forecasting Error
- Anchoring
- Attribute Substitution
- Correspondence Bias
Managing Thinking Errors
Mindfulness
Self-observation
Willingness to have 6th Sense Experiences
Nomothetic measures can be helpful/essential (study or discovery of general scientific laws)
Our best defense against inaccurate conclusions
Using multiple valid and reliable measures
- Guard against bias/blindspots
Using multiple methods of measuring
- Blend the various strengths and weaknesses every instrument inevitably has
Attributes of a Good Test
Clear instructions for administering, scoring and interpreting
Efficient use (incremental validity)
- Incremental validity refers to the extent to which a proposed test provides unique information about a construct relative to that which is offered by existing tests of the same construct
Accurate
- Reliability (consistency)
- Validity (measures what it reports to measure)
Assessments In Short
Do no harm (non-malfeasance)
Do good (beneficence)
Promote autonomy (informed consent)
Be just (be fair)
Psychological Assessments Today
In the midst of big changes
New measures
- Wartegg Drawing Completion (CWS)
- Adult Attachment Projective
- Thurston Cradock Test of Shame
Therapeutic Assessment
- Discovering that psychological assessment can do enormous good!
General Domains of Psychological Assessment
Personality assessment (traits and states)
Intellectual assessment
Neuropsychological assessment
Vocational assessment
A major goal of psychological assessment is to reduce/eliminate errors, misattributions, mistakes in characterizations, inaccurate conclusions, etc.
- Using valid & reliable measures
- Using multiple methods of measuring
- Be aware of and guard against human thinking errors; anticipate making mistakes
- Consider the nature of various types of data (strengths, weaknesses, peculiarities)
- Integrate seemingly conflicting data
- Consider the motivational and environmental circumstances of testing
- Be sure you can systematically identify characteristics of condition under consideration
- Test indicators & their absence should be directly linked to these characteristics
- Reconcile testing results with history
- Systematically revise your impressions by considering data that temper your hypothesis
- Predictions of rare events should be made sparingly
- Use validity scales and symptom validity measures to be altered to distortions
- Consider and profit from client feedback
