Psych Testing: Concepts - Types - Principles

Basic Concepts, Types, Principles, and Applications of Psychological Testing

Item: a specific stimulus to which a person responds overtly
Test: a measurement device or technique used to quantify behavior or aid in the understanding and prediction of behavior
Battery: a collection of tests designed to quantify behavior or aid in understanding behavior from multiple measurement
Assessment: an estimation of the nature, quality, or ability
Measurement: the process by which attributes or dimensions are determined
Evaluation: a process designed to provide information that will help us make a judgement about a given situation; includes more than one method of data collection including tests, interviews, collateral, etc…
A psychological test is a set of items that are designed to measure characteristics of human beings that pertain to behavior:
Behavior can be overt or covert:
Overt: observable behavior
Covert: unobservable behavior, like thoughts and feelings
Importantly, scores on psychological tests provide raw scores that need to be “scaled” in order to relate raw scores to some defined theoretical or empirical distribution. Scales will be discussed more later in the semester.

Individual vs. group
Achievement: measure of previous learning
Aptitude: measure of potential to learn or acquire a new skill
Intelligence: measure of general potential to solve problems, adapt to changing circumstances, think abstractly, and learn from experience
Personality: measure of typical behavior – traits, temperament, and disposition
Structured personality test: self-report to which the person responds true or false, yes or no to specific items
Projective personality test: provides an ambiguous test stimulus; response requirements are unclear

The principles of psychological testing refers to the basic concepts and fundamental idea that underlie all psychological tests
Important underlying principles:
Statistics
Reliability
Validity
Inference and interpretation
Test creation and construction
Test administration

The applications of psychological testing vary by context. Understanding context is critical in the use of tests so that the tests are properly administered, and the results of the tests are meaningful.
Testing in any context is usually accompanied by an interview with the test-taker. The content or goal of the interview varies by context but is used to inform the test-taking process and results. Issues of Psychological Testing
Psychological testing is not without controversy and has a history rife with racism, ableism, sexism, classism, and other forms of discrimination. Many of these still plague testing to date despite increasing awareness.
Test bias presents a continued debate in the psychological testing field and in the law

The earliest records of testing date back approximately 4000 years ago in China
Testing was used to determine fit for civil service, and included topics related to law, military, agriculture, revenue, and geography
Testing was conducted regionally for civil services positions and after three rounds of testing, the highest scoring applicants were invited to the capital for public office positions.
British diplomat and missionaries encouraged the British government to copy the Chinese system in the 1800s
The French and German governments soon followed
In 1883, the American Civil Service Commission began administering exams for entrance into public service

Importance of individual differences – no two people are exactly alike in ability or typical behavior
Charles Darwin, in his book The Origen of Species, argued that different members of the same species varied in their ability to adapt to their environment; better adaption increased the likelihood of survival

Sir Frances Galton conducted experiments to establish the validity of the theory of the survival of the fittest
Believed that virtually anything was measurable.
Used factors such as reaction time, sensitivity to stimuli, and physical characteristics as a proxy for intellectual abilities.
Used standardized procedures to measure individual differences in a timely manner.
Thousands of individuals were assessed by Galton’s lab.
Considered the father of “mental testing”.

Studied under Wundt and Galton, bringing their work to the United States.
Studied reaction time and advocated for studying the underlying reasons for individual differences.
Created the term “mental test”.

Experimental psychologists like Wundt, Herbart, Weber, and Fechner provide an alternative path toward psychological testing, one not built of the ideas of survival of the fittest
This perspective emphasizes the use of experimental methods in measuring the range of human experience. For example, what is the minimum amount of sensation necessary for an individual to experience that sensation
This is sometimes referred to psychophysics
The strict controls employed by experimental psychologists gradually became standardized in testing administration.
Still, psychological testing was not solidified as a field solely based on the theories presented by evolutionary biologists and psychophysicists
The main impetus behind psychological testing came from the need to resolve social issues, particularly the issues presenting by perceived mental disability, emotional impairment, and intellectual disability
In order to inform specialized education for poorly performing students in France, Alfred Binet developed the first general intelligence test

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