Basics of Pyschological Testing

1. Testing is the term used to refer to everything from the
administration of a test (as in “Testing in progress”) to
the interpretation of a test score.
A psychological test is essentially an objective and
standardised measure of a sample of behaviour

2. Psychological Assessment is the gathering and
integration of psychology -related data for the purpose of
making a psychological evaluation that is accomplished
through the use of tools such as tests, interviews, case
studies, behavioural observation, and specially designed
apparatuses and measurement procedures
Thus today, Assessment is a much broader term

3. In general, the process of assessment begins with a
referral for assessment from a source such as a teacher, a
school psychologist, a counsellor, a judge, a clinician, or a
corporate human resources specialist
Different Techniques are used depending on the goal of
assessment and the resistance/ state of client

4. Objective-gauge a construct or trait………v/s answer a
referral problem
Process- group or individual v/s individualized
exploration
Role of Evaluator-practically replaceable v/s key figure

5.  Chinese used testing some 4000 years ago for job
selection purposes and appeared to be a test-dominated
society
Civil service examinations designed to choose
Mandarins and all of the Emperor’s officials were
examined every third year, including job sample tests to
identify proficiency in arithmetic, archery,music,writing
and ceremonial skills

6. Candidates were also assessed for their ability to
memorize and understand the Confucian classics, as
well as in essay and poem composition.
Formal procedures were established, including
independent assessments by at least two assessors and
the standardization of test conditions, as is done often
today

7. By the seventeenth century post-Renaissance
philosophers began to look at ideas, events and
phenomena in more scientific ways, leading to a new
way of thinking called ‘empiricism’.
When Charles Darwin provided an account of the
mechanisms of evolution between 1858 and 1877,
he influenced early psychology. His principal thesis was
that members of a species exhibit variability of
characteristics and this variability results in some being
better suited than others to any particular set of
environmental conditions

8. Experimental psychologists such as Gustav Fechner,
Wilhelm Wundt and Hermann Ebbinghaus, discovered
that psychological phenomena could be described in
rational and quantitative ways.
Sir Francis Galton was the cousin of Charles Darwin
who adopted the new scientific ideas which he thought
could be proven only by careful enquiry and used his
wealth to pursue this

9. he became obsessed with making all kinds of
measurements of people in his research laboratory.
He was the first to emphasize the importance of
individual differences, created the first tests of mental
ability and was the first to use questionnaires.
he founded psychometrics and differential psychology

10. His application of exact quantitative methods resulted
in the discovery of a numerical factor which he called
correlation, specifying the degree of relationship
between individuals or any two attributes
Alfred Binet influenced by Galton’s work, was
appointed to a ministerial commission to study the
plight of retarded school children to ensure they would
have an adequate education

11. He constructed a series of tests, including short, varied
problems about daily life, as well as tests of cognitive
processes such as memory
They were made up of a series of tasks thought to be
representative of a typical child’s abilities at different
ages
Binet ranked the tests in accordance with age levels
corresponding to performances by the average child. In
doing so he distinguished between the mental age
attained on the scale and the chronological age of a
child

12. The outcomes, developed with his assistant Theodore
Simon, were received throughout the world with wide
acclaim. Binet and Simon published their last revision
in 1911.
In the United States Lewis Terman (1877–1956)
standardized the Binet–Simon scale using sampling
methods, resulting in what has since been called the
Stanford–Binet Intelligence Test .

13. Galton’s works also influenced Karl Pearson wh As a
result he wrote papers which contributed to the
development of regression analysis and the correlation
coefficient (Pearson Product–Moment Correlation
Coefficient), and discovered the chi-square test of
statistical significance.

14. One of the most productive scaling theorists was Louis
Thurstone (1887–1955), a mechanical engineer, who
made important contributions to psychology
University of Chicago- Psychometric Laboratory.
designed techniques for measurement scales, for the
assessment of attitudes and developed test theory

15.  David Wechsler (1896 – 1981) – published the
Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale in 1939 (DuBois,
1970). he scale composed of subscales so that a give
type of task or item was administered only once to the
subject
 The instrument yielded a verbal IQ, a performance IQ
and a total IQ
 Modifications were made so that the scale was more
suitable for adults than earlier scales had been, which
was known as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

16. Raymond Cattell had a major influence on the
theoretical development of personality as he sought to
apply empirical techniques to understand its basic
structure (Cattell, 1965).
He extended existing methods of factor analysis and
explored new approaches to assessment, and has been
unrivalled in the creation of a unified theory of
individual differences, combining research in
intelligence with that of personality.

17. Georg Rasch (1901–1980) is best known for his
contribution to psychometrics through the
development of a group of statistical models known as
Rasch models (Rasch, 1980).

18. Early Group Tests
 Among the first to develop group tests was Pyle, who
in 1913 published schoolchildren age norms for a
battery consisting of measures such as memory span,
digit-symbol substitution, and oral word association
(Gregory, 2007), which was intended to be used
diagnostically (DuBois, 1970).
 the Army Alpha and the Army Beta- The eight tests
were (1) following oral directions, (2), arithmetical
reasoning, (3) practical judgment, (4) synonym-
antonym pairs, (5) disarranged sentences, (6) number
series completion, (7) analogies, and (8) information.

19. The eight tests were (1) following oral directions, (2),
arithmetical reasoning, (3) practical judgment, (4)
synonym-antonym pairs, (5) disarranged sentences, (6)
number series completion, (7) analogies, and (8)
information.
he Beta was a nonverbal group test designed for use with
illiterates and recruits whose first language was not
English. It consisted of various visual-perceptual and
motor tests such as tracing a path through mazes and
visualizing the correct number of blocks depicted in a
three-dimensional drawing (Gregory, 2007).

20. Although Galton had devised an assessment method to
investigate imagery, it was not until WWI that R.S.
Woodworth applied the technique to develop an
instrument to detect Army recruits for their
susceptibility to emotional stability
The Personal Data Sheet consisted of 116 questions that
required the subject to answer Yes or No. The questions
involved fairly serious symptomatology

21. Ten months prior to his death, in June 1921, Rorschach
published Psychodiagnostics, the monograph of the
famous Inkblot Test, which became a milestone in the
history of projective testing
The Rorschach Inkblot test consisted of 10 inkblots,
which was formed by dribbling ink on a piece of paper
and folding the paper in half, producing relatively
symmetrical designs

22. Klecksography was a popular game among Swiss
children that consists of making inkblots on a piece of
paper and folding it to construct forms of an object,
such as a bird or a butterfly

23. Myers-Briggs, Keirsey's Temperments
Myers-Briggs Personality Tests, is influenced by the
work of Carl Jung and is made up of 16 distinct
personality types. These personality types are derived
from four main variables:
Intorvert/extrovert (I/E)
Sensor/ Intuitive (S/N)
Feeling/Thinking (F/T)
Judger/Perceiver (J/P)

24. Using Woodworth’s procedure of writing items that
seemed to have clinical significance and establishing
validity by contrasting the responses of normal and
abnormal subjects, S. R. Hathaway and J. C. McKinley
published the MMPI in 1943

25. Structured clinical Interview for DSM II (SCID III),
Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale
Hamilton Depression Rating Scale

26. Edward K. Strong, a psychologist whose professional
endeavor was to measure vocational interests, devoted
36 years to the development of empirical keys for the
modified instrument known as the Strong Vocational
Interest Blank (SVIB) since its first publication in 1927
Strong- Campbell Inventory
Kuder Prefernce Record

27. Luria – Nebraska
Halsted Reiten
Nimhans battery

28. The first person to emphasize that different cultures
have alternative concepts of what an ‘intelligent person’
is and that traditional tests measure only skills valued in
academia and work in industrialized societies was
sometimes referred to as ‘the test guru.’
Anastasi undertook major studies of test construction,
test misuse, misinterpretation and cultural bias, and
was the author of the influential book Psychological
Testing (1988),which has been the core text in this field
since its first edition in 1954