PSE3.1_1_IntroductionTestConstructionI (15.11.23)

Psychological test

A scientific routine procedure for recording the expressions of empirically definable (psychological) characteristics with the aim of obtaining the most accurate possible statements about the (relative) quantitative degree or qualitative category of individual characteristic expressions.

Performance tests

Tests that capture different facets of cognitive performance, with answers that can be correct or incorrect, requiring maximum performance behavior. They can only be falsified downward.

Personality tests

Tests that involve self-report of typical experience/behavior, with no right or wrong answers. Falsification is possible in both directions, including simulation (presenting higher characteristic expression than actually true) and dissimulation (presenting lower characteristic expression than actually true).

Objective personality tests

Tests, such as the implicit association test, where answers cannot be subjectively falsified and subjects do not know what the test measures. They lack face validity.

Projective procedures

Tests that serve to capture the overall personality by using ambiguous visual material into which test subjects project unconscious contents of their consciousness. They usually do not meet the required quality standards.

Apparatus tests & outpatient assessment

Tests that involve the use of electronic devices for recording physiological and physical variables, such as heart rate and body temperature. Mobile sensing, which involves the collection of data using sensors in mobile devices, is also included.

Sir Francis Galton

British statistician, sociologist, psychologist, meteorologist, eugenicist, psychometrician, and behavioral geneticist. He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and is considered the primal father of psychological tests.

Intelligence testing

The testing of intelligence in school children, with the first publication in 1905 by Alfred Binet. It is a major occupation of clinical psychology and is used as an assessment instrument in educational, industrial, military, and clinical settings.

Unstructured interview

An early form of personality assessment that is qualitative and lacks empirical validation.

Structured interview

A quantitative form of personality assessment that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, which is psychometrically sound but has less elements of rapport, idiographic richness, and flexibility.

Behavioral assessment

An idiographic approach to the functional analysis of behavior, which gained acceptance in the 1960s and 1970s.

Neuropsychological assessment

The assessment of a person's organic deficits, severity of deficits, and localization, which emerged through the synthesis of behavioral neurology and psychometrics.

Psychological assessment

The overall aim is to understand the "psychology" of an individual, involving functions such as describing, predicting, explaining, diagnosing, and making decisions about somebody. It involves the integration of empirical information from various sources.

Measurement

The process of assessing correct/incorrect item responses in tests.

Questionnaires

Non-measurement tools that involve qualitative responses.

Interviews, observations, etc.

Other qualitative methods used in psychological assessment.

Diagnostics

The process of identifying disorders and making decisions about necessary interventions.

Assessment

The process of gathering empirical information from various sources to describe, predict, explain, diagnose, and make decisions about somebody.

Test construction

The process of creating a test, which includes reviewing the literature, defining the construct, test planning, designing the test (including instructions, item development, layout), item tryout, item analysis, building a scale, and standardizing the test.

Psychometrics

The field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, including testing, measurement, assessment, and related activities.

Classical Test Theory (CTT)

A theory that uses observable information to gain insights into latent variables, assuming that errors in measurement are random and independent of each other.

Axioms

Fundamental assumptions of the Classical Test Theory, including the assumptions that each person has a true score, the expected value of observed scores equals the true value, the expected value of errors equals zero, the correlation of error and true score equals zero, and the correlation of error in one test and true score in another test equals zero.

Sources of error in assessment

Random sources (factors that differ every time a measure is used), systematic sources (bias against certain groups, factors in test design, response style), candidate-related sources (motivation, emotion), test-related sources (non-representative item package, poor item construction), procedural sources (interruptions, time limits), and environmental sources (temperature, noise).

Guidelines for the Assessment Process (GAP)

Action rules with procedural suggestions intended to help evaluators and their audience meet requirements.