Week 1 Flashcards
Tests
Test: a measurement device or technique used to quantify behavior or aid in the understanding and prediction of behavior
Tests in the modern world - a large part of everyone’s life and success depends on test results
Tests are about INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
—Find a way to quantify/categorize those individual differences
—In some ways the opposite of much experimental psychology
types of tests
Intelligence tests - how do you define what intelligence is and how do you make a test for it
Aptitude tests - for dental school- want to know that they are good with their hands - physical skills, how to you determine what pilot is the least likely to die
—-Things youre good at
Achievement tests - depends on you knowing some stuff - driving tests
Creativity tests
Personality tests
Interest inventories - career stuff - what do you like - inside/outside, people etc.
Behavioral procedures - test impulse control - how long can you stand still
Neuropsychological tests
Uses for Tests
CSPR
- Classification -
—-placement, screening, certification - different categories
—-Diagnosis and treatment planning - Self-knowledge
—Facebook quizzes - which character are you - Program evaluation
—Is this program managing students who are qualified
—-Not interested in individuals but looking at the overall - Research
—Fundamental constructs - what does personality mean
—Testing these things also defining the concepts themselves
—Used to make judgments, predictions and decisions about people
—Test for health at birth - need to know about psychometrics to use this info
Item:
Item: a specific stimulus to which a person responds overtly - response can be scored or evaluated ex. classified, graded on a scale, or counted.
Psychological and educational tests are made up of items - data produced are explicit and hence subject to scientific inquiry
Items are the specific questions or problems that make up a test.
overt and covert behavior
Overt behavior - individual’s observable activity
Ex. measure the extent to which someone might engage in or “emit” a particular overt behavior
Or measure how much a person has previously engaged in some overt behavior
Covert Behavior - takes place within an individual and cannot be directly observed - feelings and thoughts
Psychological test:
Psychological test: or educational test is a set of items that are designed to measure characteristics of human beings that pertain to behavior
The main use of these tests is to evaluate individual differences or variations among individuals
Psyched tests measure past or current behavior and some attempt to predict future behavior
Scores on tests may be related to:
Traits - enduring characteristics or tendencies to respond in a certain manner
States - specific condition or status of an individual
Scores and Context
A score can only be analyzed within a specific context
- need to look at the distribution to interpret a score
Scales - relate raw scores on test items to some defined theoretical or empirical distribution
indvidual and group tests
Individual test - only given to one person at a time
Test administrator - person giving the test
Group test - can be administered to more than one person at a time
Achievement
Achievement: previous learning
Test that measures or evaluates how many words you can spell correctly is called a spelling achievement test
How well have you learned something
Aptitude
Aptitude: potential for learning or acquiring a specific skill
Spelling aptitude: how many words you might be able to spell given a certain amount of training, education and experience
Ability to go and do something
Intelligence:
Intelligence: general potential to solve problems, adapt to changing circumstances, think abstractly and profit from experience
When a father scolds his daughter because she has not done as well in school as she can, he most likely believes that she has not used her intelligence (general potential) to achieve (acquire new knowledge).
Whats your ability to deal with the world - best aptitude test
All three concepts are encompassed - achievement, aptitude and intelligence
by the term human ability
Distinction between ability tests and personality tests
Ability tests - related to capacity or potential
Personality tests - related to the overt and covert dispositions of the individual - tendency of a person to show a particular behavior or response in a given situation - Measures typical behavior
types of personality tests
Structured personality tests - provide a statement usually of the “self-report” variety and require the subject to choose between two or more alternative responses such as true or false
Projective personality tests - either the stimulus (test materials) or the required response or both are ambiguous
Rorschach test - provide a spontaneous response
what do psychological tests measure?
Such tests measure individual differences in ability and personality and assume that the differences shown on the test reflect actual differences among individuals.
For instance, individuals who score high on an IQ test are assumed to have a higher degree of intelligence than those who obtain low scores.
The most important purpose of testing is to differentiate among those taking the tests.
Principles of Psychological Testing
Reliability: accuracy, dependability, consistency, or repeatability of test results
Validity: meaning and usefulness of test results.
validity refers to the degree to which a certain inference or interpretation based on a test is appropriate
Applications of Psychological Testing
Interview is a method of gathering information through verbal interaction, such as direct questions
Important complement to test results
Issues of Psychological Testing
Racial differences in ability, bias related to legal issues and the law
History of Testing
Closely tied with the history of psychology (esp. in America).
Increased interest in individual differences in 19th and early 20th century
Darwin (then Galton, then Cattell) Universal schooling
Historical Perspective
Early Antecedents - chinese origins
Origins of testing - Chinese had a relatively sophisticated civil service testing program more than 4000 yrs ago - set up standardized testing for this
Han Dynasty - 206 -220 BCE - test batteries (two or more tests used in conjunction)
Early test topics - civil law, military affairs, agriculture, revenue and geography.
Ming Dynasty
tests well developed - national multistage testing program involved local and regional testing centres with special booths
Did well at local level - went to provincial capitals for more extensive essay exams
Passed 3rd set of tests were eligible for public office
historical - western
e Western world most likely learned about testing programs through the Chinese. Reports by British missionaries and diplomats encouraged the English East India Company in 1832 to copy the Chinese system as a method of selecting
employees for overseas duty
British gov adopted a similar system of testing for its civil service in 1855
French and german govs followed
1883 - US gov established American Civil Service Commission
Developed and administered competitive examinations for certain gov jobs
Radical idea to take a test to do a job - in past do the job that your parent did
Charles Darwin and Individual Differences
Darwin: Non-human animals - why are some more fit than others
Difficult to develop tools for measuring differences between people
The Origin of Species 1859 - higher forms of life evolved partially because of differences among individual forms of life within a species
Given that individual members differ - some possess characteristics that are more adaptive or successful in a given environment than are those of other members
Those with the most adaptive characteristics survive at the expense of those who are less fit and that the survivors pass their characteristics onto the next generation
Galton
some people possessed characteristics that made them more fit than others
Classic Book - Classification of man according to their gifts
Take darwins ideas and see if they can be applied to people
Individual and physical differences between people
Tall, heavy, grip strength etc
Experimental studies to document the validity of his position
Concentrated on demonstrating that individual differences exist in human sensory and motor functioning
Initiated a search for knowledge concerning human individual differences
Cattell
Starting moving this into psychological testing -Mental test - individual differences in reaction time - ultimately led to the development of modern tests.
Set up a lab at the University of Pennsylvania 1888
10 mental tests (standardized testing)
Dynamometer Pressure;
Rate of Movement (time to move an arm a specified distance);
Sensation-Areas (two-point discrimination);
Least Noticeable Difference in Weight;
Reaction Time for Sound;
Time for Naming Colors;
Bi-section of a 50-cm. Line;
Judgment of Ten Seconds Time;
Number of Letters Remembered on Once Hearing
Hebart
Before psychology was practiced as a science, mathematical models of the mind were developed, in particular those of J. E. Herbart. Herbart eventually used these models as the basis for educational theories that strongly influenced 19th-century educational practices.
UNIVERSAL SCHOOLING - want to be able to identify those with talent
Anti-elitist forces - have gifts recognized
Weber
attempted to demonstrate the existence of a psychological threshold - the minimum stimulus necessary to activate a sensory system
Devised law - strength of a sensation grows as the logarithm of the stimulus intensity
Wundt
credited with founding the science of psychology
psychological testing developed from at least two lines of inquiry:
- one based on the work of Darwin, Galton, and Cattell on the measurement of individual differences
- the other (more theoretically relevant and probably stronger) based on the work of the German psychophysicists Herbart, Weber, Fechner, and Wundt.
Experimental psychology developed from the latter - the idea that testing, like an experiment, requires rigorous experimental control.
Such control - comes from administering tests under highly standardized conditions
Such tests also arose in response to important needs such as classifying and identifying the mentally and emotionally handicapped.
20th century - French minister of public instruction
French minister of public instruction appointed a commission to study ways of identifying intellectually subnormal individuals in order to provide them with appropriate educational experiences
Binet - first major general intelligence test - launched the first systematic attempt to evaluate individual differences in human intelligence
Binet - Simon Scale - published in 1905
Contained 30 items of increasing difficulty and was designed to identify intellectually subnormal individuals
Response to universal schooling - how can we identify individuals who were delayed
Identify and well-below-average intelligence - but the idea shifts easily into the possibility for individual potential
the importance of obtaining a standardization sample that represents the population for which a test will be used has sometimes been ignored or overlooked by test users.
if a standardization sample consists of 50 white men from wealthy families, then one cannot easily or fairly evaluate the score of an African American girl from a poverty-stricken family. Nevertheless, comparisons of this kind are sometimes made.
Clearly, it is not appropriate to compare an individual with a group that does not have the same characteristics as the individual.
representative sample is one
that comprises individuals similar to those for whom the test is to be used.
Standardization (new concept introduced)
sample consisted of 50 children who had been given the test under standard conditions—that is, with precisely the same instructions and format. In obtaining this standardization sample - norms with which they could compare the results from any new subject.
Without such norms, the meaning of scores would have been difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate.
Mental age compared to real age
Upper mobility
identify this talent regardless of where it is coming from
Surprise that girls performed as well as boys
Accepted once they saw the data
Group Testing WW1
Group tests - scope broadened include tests of achievement, aptitude, interest, and personality. Because achievement, aptitude, and intelligence tests overlapped considerably distinctions proved to be more illusory than real
World War One: Yerkes - Army Alpha and the Army Beta
what did each measure?
testing movement grew enormously in the United States because of the demand for a quick efficient way of evaluating the emotional and intellectual functioning of thousands of military recruits in World War I.
Binet test was an individual test - needed group
Yerkes - Army Alpha and the Army Beta
The Army Alpha required reading ability, whereas the Army Beta measured the intelligence of illiterate adults
Achievement Tests
advantages
MC Q that are standardized on a large sample to produce norms to compare results
Ease of administration and scoring, lack of subjectivity or favouritism compared to written tests, broader coverage of content, less expensive, more efficient
In schools - maintained identical testing conditions and scoring standards for a large number of children
1930s - the objectivity and reliability of these new standardized tests made the superior to essay tests
Today - many people favor written tests - reduces marginalization of minority children
Critics of testing movement
Accuracy and utility remained under heavy fire
End of 1930s - reestablish the respectability of tests
Revised stanford binet - 3000 standardization sample
Criticized bc of emphasis on language and verbal skills/reading
Few people believe that language or verbal skills play an exclusive role in human intelligence
Eventually revised 86 to include performance subtests
Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale (SB single score) - multipl scores - analyze individual’s pattern or combination of abilities
Performance IQ - performance tests no verbal response
Personality tests
Measured presumably stable characteristics or traits that theoretically underlie behavior
Traits: relatively enduring dispositions (tendencies to act, think or feel in a certain manner in any given circumstance) that distinguish one individual from another
Ex. Optimism vs. pessimism
earliest personality tests
Earliest - structured paper and pencil group tests
MC and TF, high degree of structure - responses can be scored - structured personality test
1st structured p test: Woodworth Personal Data Sheet - WW1 - simple by todays standards
Motivation to develop was to screen military recruits
Interpretation depended on the now-discredited assumption that the content of an item could be accepted at face value
Dishonesty and different interpretation from the administrator were problems
Criticism of structured tests
Criticism of structured tests that relied on face value alone - nearly driven out of existence
Following WW2 -SPT
personality tests based on fewer or different assumptions were introduced - rescuing the structured personality test
STRUCTURED - unambiguous test stim and specific alternative responses
Do you like to be at the centre of attention
Interest in PROJECTIVE tests grew - have not withstood a vigorous examination of their psychometric properties- ambiguous stimulus and unclear response requirements - subjective scoring - Rorschach (under a dark cloud today)
THEMATIC Apperception Test by Murray and Morgan
More structured
Ambiguous pictures depicting a variety of scenes and situations - boy sitting in front of a table with a violin on it
Required subject to make up a story about the scene
In 1943, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
—to use empirical methods to determine the meaning of a test response—helped revolutionize structured personality tests
Authors argued that the meaning of a test response could be determined only by empirical research
Currently the most widely used and referenced personality test
Problem with early personality tests - Woodworth
made far too many assumptions that subsequent scientific
investigations failed to substantiate
Factor Analysis
finding the minimum number of dimensions (characteristics, attributes), called factors, to account for a large number of variables
Guilford - attempt to use factor analytic techniques in the development of a structured personality test
Cattell - 16-factor personality questionnaire - declining popularity but one of the most well-constructed structured personality tests and an important example of a test developed with factor analysis
Factor analysis today is a tool used in the design or validation of just about all major tests
Woodworth Personal Data Sheet:
: An early structured personality test that assumed that a test response can be taken at face value.
first structured
personality test
The Rorschach Inkblot Test:
A highly controversial projective test that provided an ambiguous stimulus (an inkblot) and asked the subject what it might be
The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT):
A projective test that provided ambiguous
pictures and asked subjects to make up a story
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI):
A structured personality test that made no assumptions about the meaning of a test response. Such meaning was to be determined by empirical research
The California Psychological Inventory (CPI):
A structured personality test developed according to the same principles as the MMPI.
The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF):
A structured personality test
based on the statistical procedure of factor analysis
one of the things that cemented psychology as a profession
Testing was one of the things that cemented psychology as a profession
Second half of the 20th century, a lot of public suspicions about standardized testing grew
1940s
emergence of a whole new technology in psychological testing but also the growth of applied aspects of psychology
WW2 - gov encourage development of applied psychological technology
1949
formal university training standards developed and accepted - clinical psychology born - other branches soon expanded
40-50s - One of major functions of applied psychologist
40-50s - One of major functions of applied psychologist was providing psychological testing
APA psych could not conduct psychotherapy independently
Post WW2 psychologists rejected the secondary role to physicians
50-70s
Testing in a sharp decline from 50-70
The Current Environment
1980s+ branches of applied psychology emerged and flourished - neuropsychology, health psychology, forensic and child
Bad testing
Phrenology
Bump on specific spot in brain leads to specific issue
Astrology
Scorpio - i know what youre like
Rorschach
Open to interpretation
Does not work - not valid or reliable
Interview
Judge of character
what was the major function of the clinical psychologist in the late 1940s- early 1950s
testing
rejecting secondary role to physicians
Further, because many psychologists associated
tests with this secondary relationship, they rejected testing
At the same time, the potentially intrusive nature of tests and fears
of misuse began to create public suspicion, distrust, and contempt for tests. Attacks
on testing came from within and without the profession
Seguin Form Board Test
effort to educate and evaluate the mentally disabled.
