Testing Diverse Individuals

Question 1

At what level is it illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities?

Answer 1

Federal level

Question 2

What is considered accommodating a reasonable amount when it comes to people with disabilities?

Answer 2

Depends and varies by person, test, situation, disability (ex: someone visually impaired should have good lighting/large printed font

Question 3

True or False: Different administrations of the same test are equivalent to one another

Answer 3

False

Question 4

What is the goal of reasonable accommodations?

Answer 4

To reflect the construct of interest, NOT the disability

Question 5

What needs to be understood with creating reasonable accommodations (3)?

Answer 5

• need to be familiar with the purpose and intended use of the test
• need to understand the impact of modifications to test
• some tests have specifically been written for people with certain disabilities

Question 6

True or False: The person with a disability is responsible for communicating their disability for proper accommodations

Answer 6

True

Question 7

True or False: One test score is enough to diagnose someone with a disability

Answer 7

False

Question 8

True or False: Tests can be used to screen for disabilities

Answer 8

True

Question 9

What are some options for integrated assessments with disability diagnosis?

Answer 9

Combine test info with interviews, direct observations, or other methods

Question 10

Define culture

Answer 10

Socially transferred behaviors, beliefs, and products of work within a particular population, community, or group of people

Question 11

What does culture affect (within testing)?

Answer 11

• Behaviors (are you measuring the construct OR are you measuring cultural differences?)
• Responses (do they mean what we think they mean?)

Question 12

How does culture affect assessment (3)?

Answer 12

• verbal communication (language, vocab, translation [“I feel blue” is not clear across cultures])
• nonverbal communication
• cultural differences in standards, experiences, expectations

Question 13

Were historically early tests developed within multiple cultures or one culture? And what impact did it have?

Answer 13

One culture - this caused other cultures not to score well and results were interpreted negatively

Question 14

Culture-specific tests belief

Answer 14

Tests are culturally specific and should only be used within the group developed in

Question 15

Define culturally loaded

Answer 15

needing knowledge about a certain culture to be able to answer items correctly

Question 16

What increases culture loading?

Answer 16

• verbally-oriented items
• written instructions/responses
• specific facts

Question 17

What decreases cultural loading?

Answer 17

• nonverbal items
• oral instructions/responses
• abstract content

Question 18

True or False: culture-specific and culture-fair tests predict the same thing

Answer 18

False

Question 19

True or False: If a test shows mean differences between groups and is used for decision-making, fewer members of 1 group will be selected than the other

Answer 19

True

Question 20

What are potential errors when translating tests?

Answer 20

• translations can change the meaning of an item or even entire test
• different cultures may have different response styles
• constructs may not mean the same things in different cultures

Question 21

Is back-translation to verify the quality of a test enough?

Answer 21

No

Question 22

What are some questions to be concerned with when it comes to measurement equivalence (3)?

Answer 22

• are constructs understood in the same way?
• are items understood in the same way?
• do items measure equally between groups?

Question 23

True or false: mean differences mean the test is invalid or is intentionally biased

Answer 23

False

Question 24

What are some potential explanations for mean differences?

Answer 24

• true differences on the construct
• failure to consider cultural difference in test development
• other factors (e.g. stereotype threat)

Question 25

What solutions for mean differences are illegal with employment and education in the U.S.?

Answer 25

• adjusting scores
• considering culture when interpreting results

Question 26

What is a pro and con with banding to adjust for mean differences?

Answer 26

Pro: Creates brackets (stanines or quartiles) to treat everyone within that bracket as having the same score
Con: lose some predictive power

Question 27

Assume we want to know if a test is functioning equally well for different groups. What would we do?

A. Examine mean differences
B. Examine differences in variability
C. Test measurement equivalence
D. Test content validity

Answer 27

C. Test measurement equivalence