Psych Assessment big blurbs ch 7 and 8

includes big things we delved in during class, as well as textbook things such as assessment professionals and everyday psychometrics

Dr. Delphine Courvoisier

conducts quality-of-life research on people with Rheumatoid arthritis

• her focus is on health related QoL, degree of functional disability, and disease activity prevention. Achieves this with a 36 Q short form health survey (SF36)

• also uses Health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) and disease activity score(DAS)

• all data is employed to evaluate effectiveness of treatment regiments and adjust when necessary

• Looks at utility of methods used, with example being responding to series of telephone calls

  • important to see how compliance vs non compliance affects results

  • compliant people (who chose to answer) might be more conscientious, so data collected would be causally related to conscientiousness

    • this is why testing (and rejecting) hypothesis that only patients high on conscientiousness answer the phone

    • conducted a study with a personality test and EMA in a series of phone interviews, found that compliance is not attributed to personality factors

Dr. Wanda Carlos on Flecha Esmerelda

wanted to change status quo of giving anyone with a valid drivers license and no criminal record the chance to do a 3 month probationary period. Checked with supervisors over course and if good performance, they got job.

Designed the FERT:

• employee screening test

  • utility of test is analyzing whether or not it is better than just the 3 month probation period

  • cost analysis

    • false negative: not enough employees b/c FERT cut off too harsh

    • false positive: bad employees, less proficient drivers on rode

  • Face validity:

    • weed out bad people, better advertisement??

    • buy in: less likely to sue for discrimination, applicants take it more seriously

  • Content validity:

    • sample from all aspects of driving, maybe sample workers

    • time, conditions, situations to be considered

    • goal: establish criterion validity

  • predictive validity:

    • hire drivers with method

      • but also give them FERT

    • supervisor ratings for 1st 3 months

      • compare how well FERT predicts supervisor ratings

    • restriction: nobody who did not work out during 3 month period will be assessed

Selection types:

• Top down:

  • best performer gets a job, go down the line until all slots filled

  • risk of disparate impact: unintentionally harming protected groups

    • if 20th and 21st had basically same score, why pick one over other

Half in and half out:

• the status quo, 30 in and 30 out (so 30 bad drivers on road)

No false negatives:

• positive: do not fail to hire anyone who would have worked

• negative: only difference of 3 from status quo (27 bad drivers doing 3 month period compared to 30)

No false negatives:

• positive: No bad drivers doing probation period

• negative: only sure about 6 drivers, not worth it, also 24 competent drivers not able to do the probation period

Highest hit rate:

• best method (31 people accepted, only 5 bad drivers on road, only denied 4 good drivers, and accurately not accept 20 bad drivers)

Use of Body Cameras

ariel et al found that using body cams resulted in less violence and less sueing for violence. but it is hard to figure out the why

Asexuality test

Utility Big picture 1

Assumption 7 from Ch4: testing and assessment benefit society

• utility: how does this help people make decisions,

  • often quantitative

Utility Big picture 2

the ways of considering utility:

• cost analysis

• time savings

• cost-benefit ratio - some costs are worth it

• clinical utility:

  • helps us to make correct diagnoses

• selection: can we select right people? (in and out)

circumstances to have sorting tasks in tests?

overcomes social desirability

• having kids put peers in classes into different “buckets” think tier lists

  • limiting amount you can put in each bucket counters putting everyone into same bucket

show how a floor affect can ocur in prisoners

measuring integrity in prisoners would not provide any utility since they would all probably not be very integral

ceiling effect example

extraversion in grovers, everyone would score high (Context is important!)

item difficulty index

aiming for max discrimination, (so with guessing should yield .5)

item reliability index

1 of many items on a test,

looks at how each item specifically helps or hurts

Cultural Group tool Adaptation

Looked at how things such as health can be misinterpreted between Western and Non-Western groups.

• Australians view health holistically, encompassing mental, physical, and the spiritual

• ill health often perceived as a misalignment of these domains

• Americans would perceive Australians as having mild health complaints

• Australians are very reserved and do minimal eye contact, something that Westerners could view as a sign of psychopathology

  • However, Australian patients will “come alive” if a family member is present during the interview with a Caucasian clinician

• We need a yarning approach with Australian members

  • interview strategy characterized by creation of an atmosphere that promotes the interviewee to conversationally tell their own story in their own way. Stark contrast to this is interrogation, or one question after another

  • Clinicians created the Here and Now Aboriginal (Australian) Assessment - HANAA

    • involves traditional storytelling style involving family and social yarning

    • can figure out if patient has anhedonia (inability to be happy) by asking “have you lost interest in things you used to like doing”

      • this engages in culturally appropriate activities with story telling by probing with things such as fishing

      • can also probe about what a “weak spirit” is, and how frequently they feel that way