History of Research

• It is believed that tests and testing programs first came

  into being in China as early as 2200 B.C.E
• Beginning in 196 B.C.E.:

  the former system of selecting government officials mostly by heredity was replaced by a system of recommendation and investigation
• Local aristocrats recommended qualified candidates to be sent to the capital where they underwent a series of interviews in which they were questioned about how they would solve various problems of politics and governance
• Emperors of the Sui dynasty created the imperial examination system in the seventh century.
• The system became one of the most durable institutions in world history, operating with few interruptions over the next 13 centuries until it was replaced by political reform efforts in the Qing dynasty in 1906 .
• The content of the examination changed over time and with the cultural expectations of the day.

  ● Some tests were directly related to the knowledge a civil servant would need.

  ● Some test subjects may seem surprising to modern sensibility: archery, horsemanship, religious rites, classical literature, and poetry

  writing.
• In dynasties with state-sponsored examinations for official positions (referred to as imperial examination), the privileges of making the grade varied
• During some periods, those who passed the examination were entitled to a government job and to wear special garb; entitling them to be accorded special courtesies
• passing the examinations could result in:

  ● exemption from taxes.

  ● exempt one from government-sponsored interrogation by torture
• Renaissance: psychological assessment in the modern sense began to emerge.
• Eighteenth century: Christian von Wolff (1732, 1734) had anticipated psychology as a science and psychological measurement as a specialty within that science.
• 1859: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural

  Selection by Charles Darwin:

  Darwin argued that chance variation in species would be selected or rejected by nature according to adaptivity and survival value.
• It was Darwin who spurred scientific interest in individual differences.
• Darwin’s writing on individual differences kindled interest in research on heredity by his half cousin, Francis Galton.
• Francis Galton

  • became an extremely influential contributor to the field of measurement.
  • aspired to classify people “according to their natural gifts” and to ascertain their “deviation from an average”
• Galton pioneered the use of a statistical concept central to psychological experimentation and testing: the coefficient of correlation.
• Karl Pearson (1857–1936) developed the product-moment correlation technique, with roots that can be traced directly to the work of Galton
• Assessment was also an important activity at the first experimental psychology laboratory, founded at the University of Leipzig in Germany by Wilhelm Max Wundt
• Wundt tried to formulate a general description of human abilities with respect to variables.

  Wundt focused on how people were similar and viewed individual differences as a frustrating source of error in experimentation, and he attempted to control all extraneous variables in an effort to reduce error to a minimum
• James McKeen Cattell

  completed a doctoral dissertation that dealt with individual differences—specifically in reaction time.
• Cattell returned to the University of Pennsylvania in 1888 and coined the term mental test in an 1890 publication.
• Charles Spearman

  credited with originating the concept of test reliability as well as building the mathematical framework for the statistical technique of factor analysis.
• Victor Henri

  the Frenchman who collaborated with Alfred Binet on papers suggesting how mental tests could be used to measure higher mental

  processes
• Emil Kraepelin

  an early experimenter with the word association technique as a formal test
• Lightner Witmer

  cited as the “little-known founder of clinical psychology”, owing at least in part to his being challenged to treat a “chronic bad speller” in March of 1896.
• early 1900s with the birth of the first formal tests of intelligence that were useful for reasons readily understandable to anyone who had school-age children. It all began with a single test designed for use with young Paris pupils.
• Binet and Theodore Simon published a 30-item “measuring scale of

  intelligence” designed to help identify Paris schoolchildren with intellectual disability
• In 1939, David Wechsler, a clinical psychologist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, introduced a test designed to measure adult intelligence.
• For Wechsler, intelligence was “the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment”.
• Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale, now renamed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), has been revised and has extended the

  age range of test-takers from early childhood through senior adulthood.
• Robert S. Woodworth was assigned to develop a measure of adjustment and emotional stability that could be administered quickly and efficiently to groups of recruits.
• Woodworth Developed several experimental versions of paper-and-pencil psychiatric interviews which were labeled as a “Personal Data Sheet” to disguise the true purpose of one such test. Draftees and volunteers were asked to indicate yes or no to a series of questions that probed for the existence of various kinds of psychopathology.
• self-report

  • a process whereby assessees themselves supply

  assessment-related information by responding to

  questions, keeping a diary, or self-monitoring

  thoughts or behaviors.
• projective test

  • one in which an individual is assumed to

  “project” onto some ambiguous stimulus

  (inkblot, a drawing, a photograph, etc.) his or

  her own unique needs, fears, hopes, and

  motivation.
• the best known of all projective tests, a series of inkblots developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach.
• The development of psychological measurement can be

  traced along two distinct threads:

  the academic

  • In the tradition of Galton, Wundt, and other scholars, researchers at universities throughout the world use the tools of assessment to help advance knowledge and understanding of human and animal behavior.

  2. the applied

  • Ancient China and the examinations

  developed there to help select applicants

  for various positions on the basis of

  merit.
• Culture

  • is “the socially transmitted behavior patterns, beliefs, and products of work of a particular population, community, or group of people”. Prescribes many behaviors and ways of thinking.
• Henry H. Goddard raised questions about how meaningful such

  tests are when used with people from various

  cultural and language backgrounds.
• Culture-specific tests

  • tests designed for use with people from one

  culture but not from another, soon began to

  appear on the scene.
• One way that early test developers attempted to

  deal with the impact of language and culture on

  tests of mental ability was to “isolate” the

  cultural variable.