psych testing exam

How did the Chinese civil service system differ from other systems at the time?

it was an early attempt at distributing jobs based on merit

According to the CDC, the symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Nearly everyone with COVID-19 has these symptoms. However, these symptoms are found in many other common diseases, such as the common cold, bronchitis, and the flu. Think of these symptoms as a "test" for COVID-19. How accurate is this "test"?

It is highly sensitive, but not very specific

In psychological testing, "norms" are...

Scores obtained by a representative samples of people, that the examinee can be compared to

Why was the army interested in developing a nonverbal intelligence test?

The army wanted to identify intelligent immigrant and uneducated recuits to lead segregated units

Reliability must be ______ for high stakes testing

> .90

Reliability must be ______ for screening, low stakes testing, or use when combined with other tests

> .70

Alternate forms reliability

A measure of reliability between two different forms of the same test

Internal consistency (know split half, KR-20, Cronbach's alpha)

Answers how much of the obtained score variance is due to the specific items that were selected?

Content validity

Based on a widely accepted theory ; Use a review of the literature to determine what should be included

Criterion related validity

Evaluates how accurately a test measures the outcome it was designed to measure

Do practice effects affect test-retest reliability?

No

Composites are more reliable than subscales / subtests

True

Internalizing tends to have worse interrater reliability than externalizing

True

Tests that involve rapidly completing a simple task cannot calculate internal consistency reliability.

True

Consistency index

What is g?

General intelligence

Which have low g-loading?

olfactory and psychomotor precision

Which have high g-loading?

Gf, Gwm, and Gc

All CHC abilities are ______ correlated

Positively ; also called positive manifold

Gl

learning efficiency, how easily you memorize new information soyou can recall it after minutes, hours, days, or more

Gc

comprehension-knowledge, how much you know

Gr

retrieval fluency, or the ability to pull information out ofyour head

Gs

processing speed, or how fast you think

Grw

reading and writing

Gq

quantitative knowledge, inlcuding math vocabulary and number facts

Gwm

Is used to hold a phone number in mind between when you see it on a sheet of paper and, seconds later, punch it into your phone

A school nurse screens children for nearsightedness. If a child screens positive, but has normal vision, then they will take an extra vision test unnecessarily. If a child screens negative but has real vision problems (false negative), then they will have major difficulties learning at school. What can we say about the nurse's screening test?

It needs good sensitivity more than it needs good specificity

Which statement about the Child Behvaior Checklist and Youth Self-Report reliability is TRUE?

The composites are consistently more reliable than the syndrome scales

Which is NOT a way that the MMPI-3 differs from the MMPI-2?

The MMPI-2 offered only unisex norms; the MMPI-3 offers single-sex norms

What can we conclude about the validity of the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, given the theoretical structure of the test?

Since the theory it is based on is NOT widely accepted, its content validity is poor

A researcher measures test-retest reliability on the Beck Depression Inventory - 2 and the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator over a 6 month interval. Both tests yield a reliability coefficient of .60. How should the researcher interpret this finding?

That is fine for the BDI-2, because the underlying construct is expected to change in 6 months, but not okay for the MBTI, because the underlying construct should NOT change in 6 months

What is positive manifold?

The tendency for all cognitive abilities to correlate positively with one another

Did Spearman and Thurstone agree on the structure of intelligence?

No, Spearman believed that general intelligence was "real", while thurstone believed it was a statistical artifact

Most people with dyslexia have a severe impairment in Gv (visual-spatial processing) that causes them to see letters backward, moving, or out of order

False

In CHC theory, the ability RD (Reading Decoding) measures a person's ability to sound out words. This is a...

Narrow ability, part of Grw

Which of the following accounts for error due to item sampling?

Alternate forms reliability

What is the best validity coefficient?

There is no one best number, it all depends on what's being measured

What is TRUE about the Flynn Effect?

It's a 3-point-per-decade increase in the whole population's IQ. It is partically caused by the shift from concrete to abstract thinking that takes place as nations industrialize. Because of it, an examinee who takes a test that was normed a decade ago will get a falsey inflated score

The MMPI-3 items use _____ scaling, while the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist and Youth Self-Report items use _____ scaling

Dichotomous; Likert

How should critical items be interpreted?

Examiners should investigate critical items, although they are often "false positives"

Argued that sex differences in cognitive test performance were due to differences in environment, not innate ability. Also studied gifted children and demonstrated that many of the prevailing myth were untrue

Hollingsworth

Cousin of Charles Darwin, attempted to measure intelligence by testing simple fucntions such as sensory acuity and reaction time, came up with the concept of correlation while studying genetics.

Galton

Avid eugenicist who used IQ tests to institutionalize and sterilize low scorers

Wechsler

How fast you can solve a puzzle, in seconds

Ratio

Performance rankings in a spelling bee

Ordinal

t-score on the SMALSI Test Anxiety scale

Interval

Phone number

Nominal

The results of a factor analysis can be used as evidence for what type of validity?

Construct validity

Which of the following describes the relationship between reliability and validity?

You cannot have validity without reliability

Which use/uses is appropriate for a test with a reliability coefficient of .87?

Screening older adults for anxiety to determine who needs a more thorough assignment ; Measuring depression symptoms in a large research study designed to find out whether spending habits are associated with mood

Reliability is...

The degree to which a test measures what it measures

X means...

Observed score

T means...

True score

e means

Expected error

Gkn

domain-specific knowledge,information you won't encounter unlessyou're studying that particular field

A man is sentenced to death after allegedly committing murder. His attorney contends that he cannot be executed because he has an intellectual disability. As evidence, the attorney submits an IQ test which the man took in elementary school which showed a full scale score of 70. Sirius took the IQ test in 1968. The test was normed in 1951. Will discussion of the Flynn effect help Sirius's case.

Yes, because the man's 1968 performance was compared to more lenient 1951 norms.

Which questioniare offers interscorer reliability data?

Youth Self Report

Which MMPI-3 scale is most likely to be elevated in someone with schizophrenia?

Aberrant experiences

How was the CHC theory created?

By merging the results of two very similar factor analyses

Which CHC ability depends the most on formal education to develop?

Gq

Which statement about g-loadings is TRUE?

Crystalized knowledge is more g-loaded than processing speed

How does an inconsistency scale work?

One person takes the test once and that person's responses to similar items are compared

Which interpretive statement about the MMPI-3 validity scales is LEAST likely to be true?

An examinee who is trying to win money in a lawsuit by proving they were traumatized in an accident has an elevated L score

Which scale has separate norms for different countries?

Achenbach scales

The items in the Adolescent Psychopathology Scales (APS) were derived directly from the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria

Deductive

A self-report psychopathology scale indicates that its score is not correlated with IQ. What does this say about the scale's validity?

It is evidence that the scale has good discriminant validity

The MMPI-3 Behavioral/Externalizing Dysfunction composite has a correlation of -.01 with depressive disorders. This is evidence of...

Good discriminant validity

People with intellectual disability...

Usually have low scores in all CHC abilities

On average, people with higher IQs...

Get better grades in school, Make more money, & Are less likely to be incarcerated

When should internal consistency reliability NOT be calculated?

When the test only includes dichotomous items

What test characteristic does the sensitivity and specificity data in the previous question go toward establishing?

Criterion-related validity

_____ and _____ are types of internal consistency reliability

Split half; Cronbach's alpha

Which of the following is the strongest correlation?

-.86

Which of the following accounts for error due to item sampling?

Alternate forms reliability

The results of factor analysis can be used as evidence for what type of validity?

Construct validity

Why are free online IQ tests unlikely to be valid?

Developing a representative standardization sample is very expensive

What is the best reliability coefficient?

+1.00

Why is the standardized procedure important in test administration?

Because otherwise, comparisons can't be made with the normsWhen should

What does it mean for a standardization sample to be stratified by Hispanic status?

The test developers made sure that the percentage of Hispanic standardization sample participants was the same as the percentage of Hispanic residents of America

When should internal consistency reliability NOT be calculated

When the test measures how many very easy items a person can answer in a short period of time

Tell us that right now there is a difference ingroup test performance, but not why

Mean differences

Statewide math and English tests for high schoolershave different factor structures for boys and girls

Factor analysis

A math test shouldn't measureEnglish skills, but when given to a recent immigrant, math scores willcorrelate highly with English ability

Convergent & divergent validity

The MMPI-2 Paranoia subscale has many more falsepositives for African American men than white men

Special Groups

Detecting items that are harder or easier for one group thananother, while statistically controlling for overall score

Construct validity

Who wrote The Bell Curve (racist book)

Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray

Racial categories are not genetically "real"

True

Language loading

The degree to which a subtest requiresAmerican English exposure

Cultural loading

The degree to which a subtestrequires American cultural experience

What happens when the examinee does not have sufficient culture/language experience?

The test will measure the wrong construct

Does the Bayley 3 have a total composite?

No

What is the Rorschachinkblot test good for?

It can be used to get a sample of the examinee's thought process to detect thought disorder in schizophrenia

Which is NOT a common concern about projective tests?

They are open-ended, and open ended questions are inappropriate in any formal sense

How was CHC theory developed?

Independent factor analyses found very similar patterns of clusters among mental abilities

How is differential item functioning assessed (DIF) assessed?

If two groups receive different scores on a single item, while controlling for their scores on the test as a whole, DIF is present

What does g-loading mean?

The degree to which an ability correlates with general intelligence

Predictive validity correlates your score on a newly developed test with _____, but in reality we very often correlate your score on the newly developed test with _____

a future test of the same construct ; a current test of a related construct

When would an examiner want a test with poor face validity?

When conducting a forensic evaluation on an examinee who may be dishonest

Looking at the reliability coefficient for a spelling bee, a clinician says the test scores contain 10% error variance. What does it mean?

Only 90% of the influence on a person's score comes from real sources; the rest is random noise

Why are online IQ test unlikely to be valid?

Developing a representative standardization sample is very expensive