Psychological Assessment

• Psychological test is a measurement device or technique that is used to quantify behavior or aid in the understanding and prediction of behavior.
• Test scores are not perfect measures of behavior or characteristic but they do add significantly to the prediction process.
• Psychological test is a set of items that are designed to measure characteristics of human beings that pertain to behavior.
• Psychological testing refers to all possible uses, applications, and underlying concepts of psychological and educational tests.
• The main use of these tests is to evaluate individual differences or variations among individuals.
• Psychometrics is the branch of psychology that deals with the design, administration, and interpretation of quantitative tests for the measurement of psychological variables such as intelligence, aptitude, personality traits.
• Ability tests measure skills in terms of speed, accuracy, or both.
• Achievement tests measure previous learning.
• Aptitude tests measure potential for acquiring a specific skill.
• Intelligence tests measure potential to solve problems, adapt to changing circumstances, and profit from experience.
• Personality tests measure typical behaviors — traits, temperaments, and dispositions.
• The value of Cronbach alpha ranges from 0 to 1.
• Cronbach alpha is the most general method of finding estimates of reliability through internal consistency.
• Kuder-Richardson introduced KR21, which uses an approximation of the sum of the PQ products, the mean test score.
• Cronbach alpha, also known as coefficient alpha, is a formula that estimates the internal consistency of tests in which the items are non-dichotomous.
• Kuder-Richardson technique may be used if all items have the same difficulty.
• Kuder-Richardson technique simultaneously considers all possible ways of splitting the items.
• The Kuder-Richardson formula, KR20/KR21, is the formula of choice for calculating the reliability of a test in which the items are dichotomous which can be scored as right or wrong (multiple choice test).
• Cronbach alpha is calculated as the mean of all possible split-half correlations, corrected by spearman-brown formula.
• Lack of face validity means a lack of confidence in the perceived effectiveness of the test which decreases the test taker’s motivation/cooperation.
• Test blueprint is the structure of the evaluation; a plan regarding the types of information to be covered by the items, the number of items tapping each area of coverage, the organization of the items in the test, etc.
• Gold standard refers to a well-established and well-researched test.
• Ideally, test developers have a clear vision of the construct being measured, which is reflected in the content validity of the test.
• Content Validity is a judgment of how adequately a test samples behavior representative of the universe of behavior that the test was designed to sample.
• Face Validity relates more to what a test appears to measure to the person being tested than to what the test measures.
• Face Validity is not a true measurement of validity but it refers to the appropriateness of the layout of the test.
• Judgment concerning the relevance of the test items appears to be usually from the test taker, not the test user.
• More of a matter of public relations than psychometric soundness.
• Structured (objective) personality tests provide a self-report statement to which the person responds with “true” or “false” or a “yes” or “no”.
• Projective personality tests provide an ambiguous test stimulus wherein response requirements are unclear.
• Psychological tests are used in making decisions, psychological research, and diagnostic purposes.
• Making decisions involves selection and placement, deciding on the individual’s need for treatment or rehabilitation, in personnel selection and evaluating child needs.
• Psychological research includes cross-sectional, longitudinal, and meta-analytic studies.
• Both cross-sectional and the longitudinal studies are observational studies.
• Researchers record information about their subjects without manipulating the environment.
• Item sampling or content sampling refer to variation among items within a test as well as to variation among items between tests.
• Random error is a source of error in measuring a targeted variable caused by unpredictable fluctuations and inconsistencies of other variables in the measurement process.
• Environmental variables are factors in the test environment.
• Standard error of measurement is the assumption that the distribution of random errors will be the same for all people, with classical test theory using the standard deviation of errors as the basic measure of error.
• The greater portion of total variance attributed to true variance, the more reliable the test.