Testing II

The Tools of Psychological Assessment

Test- may be defined simply as a measuring device or procedure

Psychological test -refers to a device or procedure designed to measure variables
related to psychology
Format -pertains to the form, plan, structure, arrangement, and layout of test items as
well as to related considerations such as time limits. Format is also used to refer to the
form in which a test is administered: computerized, pencil-and-paper, or some other
form
Scoring - the process of assigning such evaluative codes or statements to performance
on tests, tasks, interviews, or other behavior samples

◼ Cut score - a reference point, usually numerical, derived by judgment and used to
divide a set of data into two or more classifications.
Psychometrics -may be defined as the science of psychological measurement

THE INTERVIEW

-the interview as a tool of psychological assessment typically involves more than talk.
-the interviewer is taking note of both verbal and nonverbal behavior
-method of gathering information through direct communication involving reciprocal
exchange.

THE PORTFOLIO

-paper, canvas, film, video, audio, or some other medium— constitute what is called a
portfolio
-samples of one’s ability and accomplishment, a portfolio may be used as a tool of
evaluation

CASE HISTORY DATA

- refers to records, transcripts, and other accounts in written, pictorial, or other form
that preserve archival information, official and informal accounts, and other data and
items relevant to an assessed.
-can shed light on an individual’s past and current adjustment as well as on the events
and circumstances that may have contributed to any changes in adjustment.

BEHAVIORAL OBSERVATION

- monitoring the actions of others or oneself by visual or electronic means while

recording quantitative and/or qualitative information regarding the actions
- often used as a diagnostic aid in various settings such as inpatient facilities,
behavioral research laboratories, and classrooms
- Sometimes researchers venture outside of the confines of clinics, classrooms,
workplaces, and research laboratories in order to observe behavior of humans in a
natural setting—that is, the setting in which the behavior would typically be expected
to occur. This variety of behavioral observation is referred to as naturalistic
observation

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 Testing II

ROLE PLAY TEST

- acting an improvised or partially improvised part in a simulated situation

- tool of assessment wherein assesses are directed to act as if they were in a
particular situation

COMPUTER AS TOOLS

-Computers can serve as test administrators (online or off) and as highly efficient test
scorers. Within seconds they can derive not only test scores but patterns of test scores
-If processing occurs at a central location, test-related data may be sent to and
returned from this central facility by means of phone lines (teleprocessing), by mail,or
courier
- Whether processed locally or centrally, the account of performance spewed out can
range from a mere listing of score or scores (i.e., a simple scoring report ) to the
more detailed extended scoring report, which includes statistical analyses of the test
taker’s performance.
- CAPA refers to the term computer assisted psychological assessment. By the way,
here the word assisted typically refers to the assistance computers provide to the test
user, not the test taker

Who, What, Why, How, and Where?

⚫ Who are the parties in the assessment enterprise?

Parties in the assessment enterprise include developers and publishers of tests, users
of tests, and people who are evaluated by means of tests

✓ The test developer -Test developers and publishers create tests or other methods
of assessment
✓ The test user -Psychological tests and assessment methodologies are used by a
wide range of professionals, including clinicians, counselors, school psychologists,
human resources personnel, consumer psychologists, experimental psychologists,
social psychologists
✓ The test taker -anyone who is the subject of an assessment or an evaluation can
be a test taker or an assesses.

Psychological autopsy may be defined as a reconstruction of a deceased individual’s

psychological profile on the basis of archival records, artifacts, and interviews

⚫ In what types of settings are assessments conducted?

Educational settings

-As mandated by law, tests are administered early in school life to help identify children
who may have special needs
-school ability tests, another type of test commonly given in schools is an achievement
test, which evaluates accomplishment or the degree of learning that has taken place
Diagnosis may be defined as a description or conclusion reached on the basis of
evidence and opinion

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 Testing II

Diagnostic test refers to a tool of assessment used to help narrow down and identify
areas of deficit to be targeted for intervention. In educational settings, diagnostic tests
of reading, mathematics, and other academic subjects may be administered to assess the
need for educational intervention as well as to establish or rule out eligibility for special
education programs.

Clinical settings

-These tools are used to help screen for or diagnose behavior problems.
- The tests employed in clinical settings may be intelligence tests, personality tests,
neuropsychological tests, or other specialized instruments, depending on the presenting
or suspected problem area

Counseling settings

- Assessment in a counseling context may occur in environments as diverse as schools,

prisons, and government or privately-owned institutions. Regardless of the particular
tools used, the ultimate objective of many such assessments is the improvement of the
assesses in terms of adjustment, productivity, or some related variable.

Geriatric settings

-Older individuals; at some point require psychological assessment to evaluate

cognitive, psychological, adaptive, or other functioning. At issue in many such
assessments is the extent to which assesses are enjoying as good a quality of lifeas
possible.

Business and military settings

-In business, as in the military, tests are used in many ways, perhaps most notably in
decision making about the careers of personnel.

Governmental and organizational credentialing

-One of the many applications of measurement is in governmental licensing,

certification, or general credentialing of professionals.

⚫ How are assessments conducted?

-Establish rapport
-Safeguarding the test protocols to conveying the test results in a clearly understandable
fashion.
Protocol: refers to the form or sheet or booklet on which the test taker’s responses are
entered.
-there are other obligations such as those related to scoring the test
-Interpreting the test results and seeing to it that the test data are used in accordance
with established procedures and ethical guidelines constitute further obligations of test
users

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 Testing II

- If there were third parties present during testing or if anything else that might be
considered out of the ordinary happened during testing, it is the test user’s responsibility
to make a note of such events on the report of the testing

Assessment of people with disabilities

People with disabilities are assessed for exactly the same reasons that people with no
disabilities are assessed: to obtain employment, to earn a professional credential, to be
screened for psychopathology, and so forth

Accommodation may be defined as the adaptation of a test, procedure, or situation, or

the substitution of one test for another, to make the assessment more suitable for an
assesses with exceptional needs.
Alternate assessment is an evaluative or diagnostic procedure or process that varies
from the usual, customary, or standardized way a measurement is derived either by
virtue of some special accommodation made to the assesses or by means ofalternative
methods designed to measure the same variable(s).

⚫ Where does one go for authoritative information about tests?

Test catalogues

-one of the most readily accessible sources of information is a catalogue distributed by

the publisher of the test
-publishers’ catalogues usually contain only a brief description of the test and seldom
contain the kind of detailed technical information that a prospective user might require.
-the catalogue’s objective is to sell the test
-highly critical reviews of a test are seldom, if ever, found in a publisher’s test catalogue.

Test manual

- detailed information concerning the development of a particular test and technical

information
-for security purposes, the test publisher will typically require documentation of
professional training before filling an order for a test manual

Reference volumes

- “one-stop shopping” for a great deal of test-related information.

-this volume, which is also updated periodically, provides detailed information for each
test listed, including test publisher, test author, test purpose, intended test population,
and test administration time.

Journal articles

- articles in current journals may contain reviews of the test, updated or independent
studies of its psychometric soundness, or examples of how the instrument was used in
either research or an applied context

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 Testing II

-journals are a rich source of information on important trends in testing and assessment.

Online databases

-the American Psychological Association (APA) maintains a number of databases

useful in locating psychology-related information in journal articles, book chapters, and
doctoral dissertations

A STATISTIC REFRESHER

Scales of Measurement

Measurement- The act of assigning numbers or symbols to characteristics of things

(people, events, whatever) according to rules. The rules used in assigning numbers are
guidelines for representing the magnitude (or some other characteristic) of the object
being measured

Scale - a set of numbers (or other symbols) whose properties model empirical
properties of the objects to which the numbers are assigned.

NOMINAL SCALES -involves classification or categorization

e.g. people may be characterized by gender in a study designed to compare

performance of men and women on some test

ORDINAL SCALES - classification, rank ordering on some characteristic is also

permissible with ordinal scales. Ordinal scales have no absolute zero point. In the
case of a test of job performance ability, every test taker, regardless of standing on the
test, is presumed to have some ability. No test taker is presumed to have zero
ability. (intelligence test is ordinal)

e.g. 1. In business and organizational settings, job applicants may be rank-ordered

according
2. In clinical settings, people on a waiting list for psychotherapy may be
rank-ordered according to their need for treatment.

INTERVAL SCALES - contain equal intervals between numbers, contain no

absolute zero.

e.g. The difference in intellectual ability represented by IQs of 80 and 100, for
example, is thought to be similar to that existing between IQs of 100 and 120.
However, if an individual were to achieve an IQ of 0 (something that is not even
possible, given the way most intelligence tests are structured), that would not be an
indication of zero (the total absence of) intelligence.

RATIO SCALES - has a true zero point

e.g. timed test of perceptual-motor ability that requires the test taker to assemble a
jigsaw-like puzzle. In such an instance, the time taken to successfully complete the
puzzle is the measure that is recorded. Because there is a true zero point on this scale
(that is, 0 seconds), it is meaningful to say that a test taker who completes the assembly
in 30 seconds has taken half the time of a test taker who completed it in 60 seconds.
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 Testing II

Measurement Scales in Psychology

DESCRIBING DATA:

Distribution- a set of test scores arrayed for recording or study.

Raw score - a straightforward, unmodified accounting of performance that is usually

numerical

Frequency Distributions - all scores are listed alongside the number of times each
score occurred
Simple frequency distribution - to indicate that individual scores have been
used and the data have not been grouped
Grouped frequency distribution - test-score intervals, also called class
intervals, replace the actual test scores. A decision about the size of a class
interval in a grouped frequency distribution is made on the basis of
convenience

Frequency distributions of test scores can also be illustrated graphically

GRAPH - is a diagram or chart composed of lines, points, bars, or other symbols that
describe and illustrate data

Three Kinds of Graphs:

1. Histogram- is a graph with vertical lines drawn at the true limits of each test score
(or class interval), forming a series of contiguous rectangle

2. Bar graph- numbers indicative of frequency also appears on the Y -axis, and
reference to some categorization (e.g., yes/no/maybe, male/female) appears on the
X- axis. Here the rectangular bars typically are not contiguous

3. Frequency polygon - are expressed by a continuous line connecting the points

where test scores or class intervals (as indicated on the X -axis) meet frequencies (as
indicated on the Y -axis).

Measures of Central Tendency

Measure of central tendency - a statistic that indicates the average or midmost score
between the extreme scores in a distribution.

Mean - (average) where n equals the number of observations or test scores.

Median - Middle Score
Mode - most occurring score

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 Testing II

Measures of Variability

Measures of variability
- statistics that describe the amount of variation in a distribution
-some measures of variability include the range, the interquartile range, the semi-
interquartile range, the average deviation, the standard deviation, and the variance.

Variability - an indication of how scores in a distribution are scattered or dispersed.

➢ RANGE - range of a distribution is equal to the difference between the highest

and the lowest scores. The range provides a quick but gross description of the
spread of scores

e.g. As having a range of 20 if we knew that the highest score in this distribution was
60 and the lowest score was 40(60-40=20)

➢ INTERQUARTILE AND SEMI-QUARTILE RANGE - A distribution of test

scores (or any other data, for that matter) can be divided into four parts such that
25% of the test scores occur in each quarter.

Quartile - refers to a specific point

Quarter- refers to an interval.
Interquartile range - is a measure of variability equal to the difference between
Q 3 and Q 1. Like the median, it is an ordinal statistic.
Semi-interquartile range - is equal to the interquartile range divided by 2.

➢ STANDARD DEVIATION - as a measure of variability equal to the square root

of the average squared deviations about the mean. More succinctly, it is equal to
the square root of the variance. The standard deviation is a very useful measure
of variation because each individual score’s distance from the mean of the
distribution is factored into its computation.

➢ SKEWNESS- the nature and extent to which symmetry is absent

A distribution has a positive skew when relatively few of the scores fall at the
high end of the distribution.

A distribution has a negative skew when relatively few of the scores fall at the
low end of the distribution.

➢ KURTOSIS - refer to the steepness of a distribution in its center

Distributions are generally described as platykurtic (relatively flat), leptokurtic
(relatively peaked), or—somewhere in the middle— mesocratic (normally distributed).

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 Testing II

➢ NORMAL CURVE - is a bell-shaped, smooth, mathematically defined curve

that is highest at its center. A normal curve has two tails

◆ Development of the concept of a normal curve began in the middle of the

eighteenth century with the work of Abraham DeMoivre and, later, the
Marquis de Laplace.

◆ Through the early nineteenth century, scientists referred to it as the “Laplace-

Gaussian curve.”

◆ Karl Pearson is credited with being the first to refer to the curve as the normal
curve, perhaps in an effort to be diplomatic to all of the people who helped
develop it.

Standard Scores

Standard score- a raw score that has been converted from one scale to another
scale, where the latter scale has some arbitrarily set mean and standard deviation.
Raw scores may be converted to standard scores because standard scores are
more easily interpretable than raw scores

➢ Z SCORES - (zero plus or minus one scale) results from the conversion of araw
score into a number indicating how many standard deviation units the raw score is
below or above the mean of the distribution.

➢ T SCORES - fifty plus or minus ten scale; that is, a scale with a mean set at 50
and a standard deviation set at 10.
.
Devised by W. A. McCall (1922, 1939) and named a T score in honor of his
professor E. L. Thorndike

➢ STANINE- a term that was a contraction of the words standard and nine. Stanines
are different from other standard scores in that they take on whole values from 1 to
9, which represent a range of performance that is half of a standard deviation in
width

A standard score obtained by a linear transformation is one that retains a direct

numerical relationship to the original raw score.

A nonlinear transformation may be required when the data under considerationare

not normally distributed yet comparisons with normal distributions need to be made. In
a nonlinear transformation, the resulting standard score does not necessarily have a
direct numerical relationship to the original, raw score. As the result of a nonlinear
transformation, the original distribution is said to have been normalized.

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 Testing II

By: Aoun Ali