UNIT 4

• Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Overview of the Book
  • Historical Perspective
  • Test administration
  • Test Anxiety
  • Ethical Implications of Testing
• Learning Objectives
• Test


  A measurement device or technique used to quantify behavior or aid in the understanding and prediction of behavior
• Item


  A specific stimulus to which a person responds overtly; this response can be scored or evaluated
• Psychological Test


  A set of items designed to measure characteristics of human beings that pertain to behavior
• Types of Behavior

  • Overt Behavior: an individual’s observable activity
  • Covert Behavior: takes place within an individual and cannot be directly observed
• Psychological and educational tests measure past or current behavior and may attempt to predict future behavior
• Scores on tests may be related to traits, which are enduring characteristics or tendencies to respond in a certain manner
• Types of Tests

  • Individual Tests
  • Group Tests
• Ability Tests


  • Contain items that can be scored in terms of speed, accuracy, or both
• Achievement Tests


  • Refer to previous learning
• Aptitude Tests


  • Refer to the potential for learning or acquiring a specific skill
• Intelligence Tests


  • Refer to a person’s general potential to solve problems, adapt to changing circumstances, think abstractly, and profit from experience
• Personality Tests


  • Related to the overt and covert dispositions of the individual
• Structured Personality Tests

  • Provide a statement, usually of the “self-report” variety, and require the subject to choose between two or more alternative responses
• Projective Personality Tests

  • Unstructured
• Structured Personality Tests

  • 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’
• Projective Personality Test

  • Unstructured
  • Either the stimulus (test materials) or the required response—or both—are ambiguous
  • Assumes that a person’s interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus will reflect his or her unique characteristics
• Psychological Testing


  • Refers to all the possible uses, applications, and underlying concepts of psychological and educational tests
  • Main use is to evaluate individual differences or variations among individuals
  • Measure individual differences in ability and personality and assume that the differences shown on the test reflect actual differences among individuals
• Principles of Psychological Testing


  • Basic concepts and fundamental ideas that underlie all psychological and educational tests
  • Reliability: Refers to the accuracy, dependability, consistency, or repeatability of test results
  • Validity: Refers to the degree to which a certain inference or interpretation based on a test is appropriate
• Interview is a method of gathering information through verbal interaction, such as direct questions. It serves as a major technique of gathering psychological information and provides an important complement to test results
• Applications of Psychological Testing provide a detailed analysis of many popular tests and how they are used or applied. It begins with an overview of essential terms and concepts related to the application of tests
• Many social and theoretical issues, such as the controversial topic of racial differences in ability, accompany testing. A comprehensive discussion focuses on issues of particular importance in the current professional, social, and political environment
• Most major developments in testing have occurred over the last century, many in the United States. The origins of testing, however, are not recent nor American. Chinese had a sophisticated civil service testing program over 4000 years ago
• Reports by British missionaries and diplomats encouraged the English East India Company to copy the Chinese system for selecting employees for overseas duty. The British government and later French and German governments adopted similar testing systems
• The U.S. government established the American Civil Service Commission in 1883, developing and administering competitive examinations for certain government jobs
• Charles Darwin's theory emphasized individual differences and survival of the fittest. Tests are designed to measure individual differences in ability and personality among people
• According to Darwin, higher forms of life evolved due to differences among individual forms of life within a species. Those with the best characteristics survive and pass them on to the next generation
• Sir Francis Galton aimed to show that some people possessed characteristics
• Charles Darwin: 'Those with the best or most adaptive characteristics survive at the expense of those who are less fit and the survivors pass their characteristics on to the next generation'
• Galton set out to show that some people possessed characteristics that made them more fit than others, a theory he articulated in his book Hereditary Genius, published in 1869
• Galton began a series of experimental studies to document the validity of his position


  1883
• Galton initiated a search for knowledge concerning human individual differences, which is now one of the most important domains of scientific psychology
• James McKeen Cattell extended Galton's work
• James McKeen Cattell coined the term mental test
• James McKeen Cattell's doctoral dissertation was based on Galton's work on individual differences in reaction time
• James McKeen Cattell perpetuated and stimulated the forces that ultimately led to the development of modern tests
• Experimental psychology and psychophysical measurement are major foundations of testing
• Before psychology was practiced as a science, mathematical models of the mind were developed
• J. E. Herbart used mathematical models as the basis for educational theories that strongly influenced 19th-century educational practices