Chapter 1. (Wk 1)

Learning Objectives

• Define the basic terms of psychological and educational tests.

• Distinguish between an individual test and a group test.

• Define achievement, aptitude, and intelligence and identify a concept encompassing all three terms.

• Distinguish between ability tests and personality tests.

• Define the term structured personality test.

• Explain how structured personality tests differ from projective personality tests.

• Explain what a normative or standardisation sample is and why such a sample is important.

• Identify the major developments in the history of psychological testing.

• Explain the relevance of psychological tests in contemporary society.

Standardised tests tend to disadvantage women, test takers whose parents have lower incomes and levels of education, and ethnic minorities. (Atkinson & Geiser, 2009)

 What is a test?

1. A test is a measurement device or technique used to quantify or aid in the understanding and prediction of behaviour.

2. A test may not always measure the full understanding of a material (i.e., psychology). Tests measure only a sample of behaviour, and errors are always associated with the sampling process.

   1. Test scores are not perfect measures of a behaviour or characteristic, but significantly add to the prediction process.

3. An item is a specific stimulus to which a person responds overtly; this response can be scored or evaluated.

4. A psychological test or educational test is a set of items that are designed to measure characteristics of human beings that pertain to behaviour.

   1. Overt behaviour is an individual's observable activity.

   2. Covert behaviour is an individual's internal actions that cannot be directly observed.

5. To deal with sampling distribution, psychologists make use of scales, which relate raw scores on test items to some defined theoretical or empirical distribution.

Achievement, aptitude and intelligence

•  Achievement

  • Refers to previous learning. A test that measures how many words you can spell correctly is called a spelling achievement test.

• Aptitude

  • Refers to the potential for learning or acquiring a specific skill. A spelling aptitude test measures how many words you might be able to spell given a certain amount of training, education, and experience.

• Intelligence

  • Refers to a person's general potential to solve problems, adapt to changing circumstances, think abstractly, and profit from experience.

Note: The distinctions between these three types of abilities are all highly related, all three concepts are encompassed by the term human ability.

Types of tests

1. Individual tests

   1. The examiner or test administrator gives the test to only one person at a time.

2. Group tests

   1. Can be administered to more than one person at a time by a single examiner, such as class tests.

3. Ability tests

   1. Contain items that can be scored in terms of speed, accuracy, or both.

   2. The more algebra problems you can correctly solve in a given amount of time, the higher you score in the ability to solve such problems.

4. Personality tests

   1. Are related to the overt and covert dispositions of the individual.

      1. For example, the tendency for a person to show a particular behaviour or response in a given situation.

      2. Personality tests measure typical behaviour.

5. Structured personality tests

   1. 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.

6. Projective personality tests

   1. Either the stimulus (test materials) the required response, or both are ambiguous.

      1. For example, in the Rorschach test, the stimulus is an inkblot. The participant is then to provide a spontaneous response.

      2. Projective tests assume that a person's interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus will reflect his or her unique characteristics.

7. Psychological testing

   1. Refers to all the possible uses, and underlying concepts of psychological and educational tests. The main use of these tests, though, is to evaluate individual differences or variations among individuals.

      1. Such tests measure individual differences in ability and personality and assume that the differences shown on the test reflect actual differences among individuals. Thus a level of scrutiny must be applied when interpreting results.

Principles of Psychological Testing

1. Reliability

   1. Refers to the accuracy, dependability, consistency, or repeatability of test results. In more technical terms, reliability refers to the degree to which test scores are free of measurement errors.

      1. There are many ways a test can be reliable. For example, test results may be reliable over time, which means that when the same test is given twice within any given time interval, the results tend to be the same or highly similar.

2. Validity

   1. Refers to the meaning and usefulness of test results. More specifically, validity refers to the degree to which a certain inference or interpretation based on a test is appropriate.

Historical Perspective

Early Antecedents

1. Evidence suggests that China had a relatively sophisticated civil service testing program more than 400 years ago. (DuBois, 1970, 1972).

1. Every third year in China, oral examinations were given to help determine work evaluations and promotion decisions.

Charles Darwin and Individual Differences

1. The publication of Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of Species in 1859 led to greater study into individual differences.

1. Proposed the idea of natural selection whereby; the species that evolve with specific high-survivability traits would procreate and pass down these traits.

2. A relative of Darwin, Sir Francis Galton applied Darwinian theory to the study of human beings.

   1. He concentrated on demonstrating that individual differences exist in human and sensory-motor functioning, such as reaction time, visual acuity, and physical strength.

Experimental Psychology and Psychophysical Measurement

3. J.E. Herbart

   1. Used mathematical models as the basis for educational theories that strongly influenced 19th-century educational practices.

4. E.H. Weber

   1. Attempted to demonstrate the existence of a psychological threshold, the minimum stimulus necessary to activate a sensory stem.

5. G.T. Fechner

   1. Devised the law that the strength of a sensation grows as the logarithm of the stimulus intensity.

6. Wilhelm Wundt

   1. Set up a laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879.

   2. Credited with founding the science of psychology.

7. E.B Titchner whose student, G. Whipple, recruited L. L. Thurstone, E. Strong, and other early prominent U.S. psychologists.

   1. Darwin, Galton, and Cattell on the measurement of individual differences, and the other (more theoretically and stronger) based on the work of the German psychophysicists Herbart, Weber, Fechner, and Wundt.

      1. Experimental psychology developed from the latter. From this work also came the idea that testing, like an experiment, requires rigorous experimental control.

   2. One of the earliest tests resembling current procedures, the Seguin Form Board Test (Seguin, 1866/1907), was developed to educate and evaluate the mentally disabled.

8. Kraeplin (1912)

   1. Devised a series of examinations for evaluating emotionally impaired people.

The Evolution of Intelligence and Standardized Achievement Tests

1. The first version of Binet’s intelligence test was called the Binet-Simon Scale, published in 1905.

   1. This instrument contained 30 items of increasing difficulty, designed to identify intellectually subnormal individuals.

   2. Later augmented by a standardisation sample, consisting of 50 children who had been given the test under standard conditions.