Psychological Tests: What Are They and Why Do We Need Them? Flashcards
(39 cards)
Why do we have psychological tests
- classification
- diagnosis and treatment planning
- self knowledge
- program evaluation
- research
psychological test
- an OBJECTIVE procedure for sampling and quantifying human behaviour
- TO MAKE inferences about a particular psychological construct or constructs
- USING standardised stimuli and methods of administration and scoring
History of psychological testing
China (Han Dynasty – 206 B.C.E to 200 C.E)
o batteries for a range of issues
o jobs within the public office and used until the early years of the twentieth century
History of psychological testing
Britain (early 19th century)
o Class distinctions = inheritance of intelligence linked to inheritance of social position
o incongruent with the major scientific drive at the time.
TWO METHODS WERE DEVELOPED IN OPPOSITION TO THIS BELIEF SYSTEM;
o Experimental: Used the scientific method to quantify psychological phenomena.
o Observational: Originally hypothesised by Darwin and then applied specifically to human behaviour by Sir Francis Galton
France (late 19th century) MERITOCRACY
o An individual’s worth is determined by their ability and merit
o developed categories in community; Determined who should be leading and who should be under-classed
Binet
- children who would benefit from special education through intelligence test. –> the first of the modern intelligence tests
performance on a range of different problems can be aggregated to yield an overall estimate of, in his terms, mental age
mental age;
child’s standing among children of different chronological ages in terms of his or her cognitive capacity.
stanford-binet test
Binet’s test assimilated in the cultural milieu
Standford-binet (Lewis Terman) dominated intelligence tests for individuals aged from 3 years to 16 years –> until David Wechsler
Practical performance test
- Binet’s test led to a demand in practical or performance tests of ability that did not depend on verbal skills or exposure to mainstream formal schooling.
- Stanley Porteus –> mazes for assessing comprehension and foresight – forerunner for tests that weren’t just dependent on English and verbal
WW1 and screening
Clarence Yoakum and Robert Yerkes and colleagues developed two group tests of general mental ability for recruiting US armed services during the First World War.
The Army Alpha test
assessing the ability levels of those who could read and write
The Army Beta test
those who were not literate.
Wechsler intelligence test (contemporary)
- adopted basic structure of WW1 and developed the Verbal and Performance subscales for his test of adult intelligence.
- Non-verbal scales (reasoning and matrix manipulation and much more visual constructs)
- Multiple facets of IQ
- overall assessment of intellectual level and diagnosing ( psychiatric settings)
superior to the Stanford-Binet.
o content more age appropriate
o replaced mental age scoring method with the Deviation IQ method,
WW1 and Robert Woodworth
- first self-report personality test.
- screening for psychological adjustment to military situation
o short questions identified from psychiatry textbooks and other expert sources.
o military psychiatrist (starting being led by a specialist)
o a forerunner for personality tests
Minnesota Multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI) - Starke Hathaway and John McKinley
o discriminate between those without symptoms of mental illness (‘normals’) and patient groups with particular diagnoses.
o 566 items, heterogeneous in content, and sophisticated
o four validity scales for the purpose of identifying various forms of untruthful responding by the test taker that could invalidate inferences drawn from the content scales
mental test
o a supplement to the unaided diagnostic ability of the doctor or psychiatrist.
o ‘objective’, –> method of scoring is sufficiently straightforward for two or more scorers of the same test performance to agree closely on the final score.
Projective tests
- required judgment in their scoring.
- psychodynamic theorising -> the operation of unconscious motivational effects – freud
Hermann Rorschach test
a series of blots gave rise to meaningless designs that the patient was asked to make sense of.
projective hypothesis
test takers draw on own psychic resources and thus demonstrate something of the workings of their mind.
-spurred more tests
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Henry Murray Christiana Morgan,
- second most widely used projective technique after the Rorschach.
- describing ambiguous scenes.
- Used in WW2
- business organisations for the selection and promotion of senior executives and used in organisational psychology
Personality tests
o measure behaviour rather than ability
- Measured traits
o Structured
o MMPI (much more scientific and objective)
o Psychometrically sound – Factor analysis
‘Assessment
high-level reasoning process involved in the application of psychological procedures to the individual case, and henceforth almost completely replaced the term ‘mental testing’.
Bias and Misuse (eugenics)
Galton
- improving human species through selective parenthood
Goodard
o Culturally biased version of the Stanford-Binet Scale to screen immigrants – “feebleminded” people should be sterilised or institutionalised
o Ideas adopted by Nazi Germany
Jensen
- 60s and 70s – Genetic basis for IQ Psychological testing can be very powerful.
test - objective
- Gauge an individual’s ability
- Score and categorised
Example: child behavioural problems testing will measure a child’s behaviour
