Testing Chp 1

• Putting numbers or categories onto people
• Usually about individual differences but not always

• IQ test
• Personality
• Abnormal personality (mental disorders)
• Vocational testing
• Educational testing
• I/O (industrial/organizational) psychological testing
• Learners permit exam

• WAIS
• Stamdford-Binet
• Raven's progressive matrices

• MMPI
• Rorschach

Army ASVAB

Abstract construct or Operational definition

something that we can't directly measure that is of psychological interest. ex. intelligence, alcoholism, introversion, vocational ability, mental illness

• a formal method of assigning a number or category to someone
• operational definitions bring abstract constructs down to earth
• a test is an operational definition

• Theoretical/Methodological Psychometrics and Substantive or appplied
• Specific tests assessment

an attempt to measure your mental ability or your personality

Development and Deployment the people who use them (clinical psychologist for example)

• you must "test the test" on many people to get:
• Psychometrics-how good is the test
• Population and subpopulation norms

You use the test on a single person to get information about him or her

Psychometricians

Clinical psychologists, I/O psychologists, school psychologists, and others

No

• they both have lists of questions, but they serve different purposes
• many things we learn about test design also applies to surveys

• Surveys look at general attitudes shared by many people
• Tests summarize something about a single person

• Assessment-broad, includes any kind of assessment adn can be formal or informal
• Testing-narrow, includes only tests

tests with a scoring procedure

interviews and other formats that lack a scoring procedure

Mutiple assessment always yield a better picture than a single assessment

a civil-service exam in China that ran from approximately 2200 B.C. to 1905

• Knowing the Four Great Books and Five Classics
• Many students failed. myths say some failed because they were corrupted by women and alcohol
• Some used to cheat by writing answers on a shirt
• Test harder than getting into Harvard

Wundt 1875

he invented the term mental test, started the psychological corporation, which still owns many important tests

• Army alpha test of intelligence
• Army Beta test
• SAT's
• Group achievement tests- Stanford Achievement test

Developed in WWI to test recruits. Culturally biased and very difficult

and attempt to make a language-free version of the alpha

developed after WWII, these were an attempt to make entrance to colleges fair, although they are now accused of the opposite

• this has blossomed under "no child left behind", and each state has different tests.
• Sc had BSAP and then the PACT

• Interests (vocational)
• Objective personality tests
• Projective personality tests

• Edward Thorndyke (1912) published a study of the interests of 100 students as they went through school
• J.B. Miner (1922) did an early "interest blanks"
• Strong Vocational Interest Blank was developed int he 1920's and continues to be used today

• Woodworth developed an early objective personality test to test soldiers in WWI for mental illness
• It became the model for the MMPI that we still use today

• the basic idea is to give people an ambiguous stimulus, and they project their personalities into these stimuli in their responses
• originally developed by C.G. Jung
• reading a word and say the first word that comes as a response

student of Jung's that developed the famous Rorshach ink blots

later developed the TAT (thematic apperception test), which consisted of photographs.

• Industry: situational test in industry; replicate a naturalistic work situation
• Mental health: Clinical interviews in clinical psychology
• Schools: rating scales and other methods increased because laws governing students' rights have increased