[BES 3149] Prelims Reviewer

Assessment

• The evaluation or estimation of the nature, quality, or ability of someone or something

Process of Assessment

1. Referral

2. Select tools

3. Formal assessment

4. Report findings

Referral for Assessment

Fill in the blank:

• The process begins with a _ from a source such as a teacher, psychologist, counselor, etc.

Competency to Stand Trial

• Capacity to be tried in court as determined by a person’s ability, at the time of trial.

Level A Test

• Type of test that primarily consists of school-made assessments (not necessarily school administered).

Level B Test

• Type of test administered by group and by RPm.

Level C Test

• Type of tests administered individually and by RPsy (e.g., Rorschach Test).

Report of the Findings

Fill in the blank:

• After assessment, the assessor writes a _ that is designed to answer the referral questions

Tools of Psychological Assessment

1. Test

2. Test Content

3. Test Format

4. Test Administration Procedures

5. Psychometric Soundness of Tests

6. Psychometrics

7. Psychometric Test Utility

8. Interview

9. Portfolio

10. Case History Data

11. Behavioral Observation

Test Content

• This is considered as the subject matter of the test; the materials or questions included in a test.

Test Format

• This is the form, plan, structure, arrangement, layout of test items, and manner of test administration– computerized, paper-and-pencil

Psychometric Soundness of Tests

• How consistently and how accurately a psychological test measures what it purports to measure

Psychometrics

• It is the science of psychological measurement

Psychometric Test Utility

• Usefulness of practical value that a test or other tool of assessment has for a particular purpose

Interview

• A method of gathering information through direct communication involving reciprocal exchange

Portfolio

• A tool of evaluation consisting of samples of one’s ability and accomplishments

Behavior Event Interviewing (BEI)

• A more objective and specific method (using the STAR assessment) to battle a test taker’s tendency to answer questions in a generic way.

Case History Data

• Records, transcripts, and other account in written, pictorial, or other form that preserve archival information, official and informal accounts, and other data and items relevant to an assessee.

Behavioral Observation

• Monitoring the actions of others or oneself by visual or electronic means while recording quantitative and/or qualitative information regarding those actions

Parties in the Assessment Enterprise

1. Test Developer and Publisher

2. Test Users

3. Test Taker

4. Society at Large

5. Other Parties

Test Anxiety

• Test takers lose the capability to perform well because of this, which can be solved by establishing rapport with the test takers.

Informed Consent

• Process where a person is given all the important information about a decision or treatment before agreeing to it.

Test Acquiescence

• One’s tendency to always respond with “true” or “yes” answers to the questionnaire items regardless of what the item content is.

Psychological Autopsy

• When the test taker is dead; used to shed light on suicidal behavior and develop prevention.

The Test Developer and Publisher

• The creators and distribution of test and other methods of assessment

The Test User

• Must be QUALIFIED and also PERMITTED TO PURCHASE

  • Examples: clinicians, counselors, school psychologists, human resources personnel, consumer psychologists, experimental psychologists social psychologists, etc.

The Test Taker

• This party has plenty of issues to consider like

  • Test anxiety, Understanding and agreement with the rationale of the assessment, etc.

Society at large

• Creates needs for new variables to measure

Assessment Settings

1. Educational Settings

2. Clinical Settings

3. Counseling Settings

4. Geriatric Settings

5. Business and Military Settings

6. Governmental and Organizational Credentialing

7. Academic Research Settings

Educational Setting

• This assessment setting involves achievement tests and diagnostic tests

Clinical Setting

• This assessment setting involves hospitals, in-patient and out-patient clinics, private practice consulting rooms, schools, other institutions

• Mostly individual assessment, with group setting usually for screening

Counseling Setting

• This assessment setting involves schools, prisons, government and private institutions

• Measures of social and academic skills, personality, interest, attitudes, values

Geriatric Setting

• This assessment setting involves the assessment of quality of life (whether self-report or observed)

• Assessment of cognitive decline

Dementia

• Loss of cognitive functioning which affects memory, thinking, reasoning, psychomotor speed, attention, and personality.

• Also occurs as a result of damage to or loss of brain cells.

Alzheimer’s Disease

• Best known among the many forms of dementia.

Pseudodementia

• A condition usually caused by severe depression in the elderly which affects cognitive functioning and mimicking dementia.

Business and Military Setting

• This is an assessment setting focused on decision making about careers of personnel

• Achievement, aptitude, interest, motivational tests (affecting decision to hire, promote, or transfer)

Governmental and Organizational Credentialing

• This assessment setting involves licensures, certification, membership in organizations

Academic Research Settings

• This assessment setting involves measuring variables being explored by the researcher

Obligations of the Assessment Professional

1. Select and use only the most appropriate tests

2. Test should be stored safely

3. A prepared and suitably trained person administers the test

4. Be familiar with the test materials and procedures

5. Ensure a conducive testing area

6. Rapport is important (especially in 1-on-1 or small groups)

7. Safeguard test protocols

8. Convey results clearly and understandably

9. Report presence of third parties during testing

10. Scoring and interpretation must conform to established and ethical procedures

Hawthorne Studies

• Researchers found that subjects responded more to social factors (e.g., the knowledge of being observed) rather than physical conditions (e.g., lighting).

Third Parties

• Only applicable on individually administered tests.

Achievement Test

• Measures the amount of learning

Diagnostic Tests

• Tools of assessment used to help narrow down and identify areas of deficit to be targeted for interventions

Use of Psychological Tests

1. Assessment Needs in Education

2. Selection and Classification of Industrial Personnel

3. Individual Counseling

4. Research and Data Gathering

France

Fill in the blank:

• The earliest use of tests to identify mentally retarded persons stared in _?

Test

• A measurement device or technique used to quantify behavior or aid in the understanding and prediction of behavior. (Kaplan and Saccuzzo, 2018)

Psychological Test

• A set of items that are designed to measure characteristics of human beings that pertain to behavior. (Kaplan and Saccuzzo, 2018)

• An objective and standardized measure of a sample of behavior (Anastasi and Urbina, 1997)

Psychological Assessment

• The gathering and integration of psychology-related data for the purpose of making a psychological evaluation that is accomplished through the use of tools such as tests, interviews, case studies, behavioral observation, and specially designed apparatuses and measurement procedures.

Psychological Testing

• The process of measuring psychology-related variables by means of devices or procedures designed to obtain a sample of behavior. (Cohen and Swerdlik, 2018)

Overt

• A type of measured behavior wherein activity is observable

Covert

• Takes place within the individual and cannot be directly observed (feelings, thoughts)

Individual Test

• A type of test given to one person at a time

Group Test

• A type of test that can be administered to more than one person at a time by a single examiner

Ability Test

• A type of test that contains items that can be scored in terms of speed, accuracy or both

  • Achievement, Aptitude, Intelligence

Personality Test

• A type of test related to the overt and covert dispositions of an individual

  • May be self-report/objective or projective

Essential Test Elements

1. Standardization

2. Establishment of Norms

3. Objective Measurement of Difficulty

4. Reliability

5. Validity

Standardization

Essential Test Element

• Implies uniformity of procedures in administering and scoring the test

Establishment of Norms

Essential Test Element

• Imply average or normal performance

• Psychological tests have no predetermined standards of passing or failing. An individual’s test score is interpreted by comparing it with the scores obtained by others on the same test.

Objective Measurement of Difficulty

Essential Test Element

• The administration, scoring, and interpretation of scores are independent of the subjective judgment of the individual examiner

• Difficulty level of the test/test item is determined based on objective, empirical procedures.

Reliability

Essential Test Element

• Is the consistency of scores obtained by the same persons when retested with the identical test or with any equivalent form of test

Validity

• The degree to which the test measures what it purports to measure

Item

• A specific stimulus to which a person responds overtly; this response can be stored or evaluated

• It is also described as the specific questions that make up a test

Qualified Examiner

Fill in the blank:

• A _ is needed for the three major aspects of the testing situation.

Norm-referenced

• The interpretation of the test is based on norms.

Random Responding

• Continuously answering questions even though they did not understand the question.

Test Score

Fill in the blank:

• A _ helps us to predict how the client will feel and act outside the test situation

Rapport

• Refers to the examiner’s efforts to arouse the test taker’s interest in the test, elicit their cooperation, and encourage them to respond in a manner that is appropriate to the test’s objective

Coaching

• An example of this are review centers, focused more on learning How to take the test and not Learning.

Invalidated

Fill in the blank:

• A test score is _ only when a particular experience raises the score without appreciably affecting the behavior domain that the test is designed to measure

Test Sophistication

• An effect of test taking practice

China

• Where the tests and testing programs first came into being as early as 2200 B.C.

• Testing was instituted as a means for selecting who, of many applicants, would obtain government jobs, which was a step forward in a culture where one’s position in society was largely determined by the family they were born into.

Ancient Greco-Roman

• These writings indicate attempts to categorize people in terms of personality types (i.e., reference to abundance or deficiency in some bodily fluid such as blood or phlegm such as the four humors).

Four Humors

1. Blood - sanguine

2. Phlegm - mabagal

3. Black bile - melancholic

4. Yellow bile - madaling magalit

19th Century

• An era wherein strong awakening of interest in the humane treatment of mentally retarded and insane persons

Relevant Individuals During the 19th Century

1. Esquirol

2. Seguin

3. Charles Darwin

4. Francis Galton

5. Wilhelm Wundt

6. James McKeen Cattell

7. Herman Ebbinghaus

8. Alfred Binet

Esquirol

• French physician whose two-volume work made the first explicit distinction between mentally retarded and insane individuals

• Wrote more than 100 pages of his work devoted to mental retardation

Use of Language

• According to Esquirol, this is the most dependable criterion of a man’s intellectual level.

Seguin

• French physician

• Pioneered in the training of mentally retarded persons

On the Origin of Species

• Released in 1859

• A book wherein Charles Darwin argued that chance variation in species would be selected or rejected by nature according to adaptivity and survival value.

Charles Darwin

• He has spurred interest in individual differences.

• Wrote On the Origin of Species

• According to him, individual differences are of the highest importance, for they afford materials for natural selection to act on.

Francis Galton

• English biologist; Darwin’s half cousin

• Aspired to classify people “according to their natural gifts” and to ascertain their “deviation from the average”

• Credited to be primarily responsible for the launching of the testing movement and development of statistical methods (coefficient of correlation)

Wilhelm Wundt

• Emphasized the need for rigorous control of the conditions under which observations were made (standardization)

• Founded the first laboratory dedicated to experimental psychology in Leipzig, Germany

1879

• The year in which the problems studied in Wundt’s laboratories were concerned largely with sensitivity to visual, auditory, and other sensory phenomena

Anthropocentric Records

• Study of the measurements and proportions of the human body.

James McKeen Cattell

• American psychologist, student of Wilhelm Wundt

• His role model is Francis Galton

  • Stimulated his interest in the measurement of individual differences

1888

• The year in which Cattell, while lecturing at Cambridge, came in contact with Galton, whom he regarded as “the greatest man I have known.”

Mental Test

• James McKeen Cattell was the first to use this term in 1890.

Herman Ebbinghaus

• German psychologist

• Administered tests of arithmetic computation, memory span, and sentence completion to school children

Alfred Binet

• French psychologist

• Urged that children who failed to respond to normal schooling be examined before dismissal, and if considered educable, be assigned to special classes

• His advocacy for the cause of mentally retarded children led to the establishment (in France) of a ministerial commission for the study of retarded children

1837

• The year wherein Seguin established the first school devoted to the education of mentally retarded children

1848

• The year wherein Seguin migrated to the USA, made suggestions regarding the training of mentally retarded persons

1884

• The year wherein Galton set up an anthropometric laboratory at the International Exposition, where visitors could be measured on certain variables

1895

• This is the year wherein Alfred Binet and Victor Henri criticized most of the available tests as being too largely sensory and as concentrating unduly on simple, specialized abilities

• Led to the development of the famous Binet Intelligence Scales

Heredity

Fill in the blank:

• Galton’s initial work on _ was done with sweet peas, in part because there tended to be fewer variations among the peas in a single pod

Psychological Corporation

• Named 20 of the country’s leading psychologists as its directors

• The goal of the corporation was the “advancement of psychology and the promotion of the useful applications of psychology”

Sentence Completion

• The most complex of the 3 tests administered by Ebbinghaus, showed a clear correspondence with the children’s scholastic achievement

1905 Scale

Intelligence Scale

• In collaboration with Theodore Simon

• Also known as the Binet-Simon Scale

• Made use of a standardization sample of 50 children

• Performance > paper and pencil

• Measured judgment, comprehension, and reasoning

1908 Scale

Intelligence Scale

• Nearly twice as many items as the 1905 Scale

• Some unsatisfactory tests in the 1905 Scale were eliminated

• All tests were grouped into age levels

1911 Scale

Intelligence Scale

• Third revision, coincided with Binet’s untimely death

• No fundamental changes, more tests added at several year levels, extended to the adult level