5016 intro

• Individual Differences


  Enduring psychological characteristics that distinguish one person from another and thus help to define each person's individuality
• Individual Differences Psychology


  Seeks to identify what makes people unique and understand how and why people differ from one another
• Types of individual variation

  • Inter-individual variation: the ways in which people differ from each other
  • Intra-individual variation: the ways in which a person's own behaviour, thoughts and feelings can vary
• Core assumptions of Individual Differences Psychology

  • Enduring patterns: People can be characterised by their "typical" thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, which are relatively stable
  • Scientifically measurable: Similarities and differences between people can be measured scientifically
  • Practical Implications: The individual differences measured can have practical implications in clinical, counselling, health, occupational and educational contexts
• Intelligence


  Cognitive abilities
• Personality


  Consistent patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving that differentiate one person from another
• Creativity


  Aspects of 'novelty' and 'usefulness'
• Psychometrics is concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement
• Reliability


  The consistency of a measure
• Validity


  The extent to which an instrument can measure what it is intended to measure
• Types of Reliability


  • Internal consistency: items that propose to measure the same construct are consistent in producing similar scores
  • Test-retest reliability: the degree to which test scores are consistent from one test administration to the next
  • Inter-rater reliability: the degree of agreement between two or more raters
• Types of Validity


  • Face Validity: Does a measure appears to be effective in measuring what it is intended to measure?
  • Content Validity: Does a measure fully cover the content that it is supposed to measure?
  • Construct Validity: Concurrent validity, Convergent validity, Factorial Validity, Predictive validity