Psychological Testing: A Test User’s Guide
The BritishPsychological SocietyPromoting excellence in psychologyPsychological testing:A test user’s k1
ContentsIntroduction. 3Section 1: Questions about tests. 4What is a psychological test?. 4Categories of test. 4Measures of typical performance. 5Measures of maximum performance. 6Aptitude. 7Psychological dysfunction. 7Areas of application. 7What should I look for in a psychological test?. 8Reliability. 8Validity. 9Interpretation. 9Fairness and bias. 10Where to find such evidence. 10The BPS Test Registration and Test Reviews process. 11Section 2: Questions about test use. 12What knowledge and skills do I need?. 12How do I ensure that I follow good practice?. 12Clients and test takers. 13Testing as a social contract. 14Section 3: The BPS Qualifications in Test Use. 15Levels of qualification. 15Test User qualification. 15How to gain a BPS qualification in Test Use and join the RQTU. 16Registering with test publishers and suppliers. 17How do I maintain my competence in testing?. 18The Register of Qualifications in Test Use (RQTU). 19Further information. 18Appendix A: ITC Guidelines for an outline policy on testing. 20Appendix B: ITC Guidelines for developing contractsbetween parties involved in the testing process. 21Appendix C: British Psychological SocietyCode of Good Practice for Psychological Testing. 232www.psychtesting.org.uk
IntroductionThis guide is about using psychological tests and the principles of good test use.This guide is designed to answer seven questions in two main areas.Questions about tests:1. What are psychological tests?2. What should I look for in a psychological test?3. Where can I find out more about particular tests and test suppliers?Questions about test use:4. What knowledge and skills do I need to qualify as competent in the use ofpsychological tests?5. How do I obtain a BPS Qualification in Test Use?6. How do I maintain my competence and keep up-to-date on matters relatingto psychological testing?7. How do I ensure that I follow good practice?Questions about test use: The need for people to be competent test users and to use technicallysound tests. The services provided by the BPS to test users. Defining standards of competence in test use. The BPS Test Reviews and Test Registration process. The Psychological Testing Centre’s (PTC) website (www.psychtesting.org.uk)which provides information on tests and testing for test users, test takers andtest developers.www.psychtesting.org.uk3
Section 1: Questions about testsWhat is a psychological test?Psychological tests are used in all walks of life to assess ability, personality andbehaviour. A test can be used as part of the selection process for job interviews, toassess children in schools, to assess people with mental health issues or offendersin prisons.It is very difficult to define ‘tests’ in a way that everyone would agree upon. Intheir guidelines on test use, the International Test Commission describes the areascovered by tests and testing as follows:1. Testing includes a wide range of procedures for use in psychological,occupational and educational assessment.2. Testing may include procedures for the measurement of both normal andabnormal or dysfunctional behaviours.3. Testing procedures are normally designed to be administered under carefullycontrolled or standardised conditions that embody systematic scoring protocols.4. These procedures provide measures of performance and involve the drawing ofinferences from samples of behaviour.5. They also include procedures that may result in the qualitative classification orordering of people (e.g. in terms of type).Any procedure used for ‘testing’, in the above sense, should be regarded as a‘test’, regardless of its mode of administration; regardless of whether it wasdeveloped by a professional test developer; and regardless of whether it involvessets of questions, or requires the performance of tasks or operations (e.g. worksamples, psycho-motor tracking tests, interview data).Tests are designed for a purpose and the use of a particular test will varyaccording to the objectives of assessment. Some broad distinctions betweendifferent categories of tests can be made as follows.Categories of testIn general, all tests fall into two broad categories. There are those designedto assess personal qualities, such as personality, beliefs, learning styles, andinterests; abnormal phenomena such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc.,and to measure motivation or ‘drive’. These are known as measures of typicalperformance. These are usually administered without a time limit and thequestions have no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers.Second, there are those designed to measure performance. These are calledtests of ability, aptitude or attainment and are known as measures of maximumperformance. Such tests either consist of questions with right answers, or tasksthat can be performed more or less well. This distinction between typical andmaximum performance can be applied to tests used in educational testing, forclinical assessment and diagnosis, and for testing in the workplace.4www.psychtesting.org.uk
Measures of typical performanceMeasures of typical performance are designed to reflect a person’s normalbehaviour, whether in their job, in education or in forensic settings. Examplesof typical performance measures would be: measures of Personality, measuresof Vocational Interests, of Cognitive Styles and measures of Motivation andDrive. Tests of typical performance are usually administered without any timelimit on their completion. Measures of typical performance may be designed toassess differences between people within normal ranges of functioning or may bespecifically designed to help understand types or degrees of dysfunction.Personality Inventories. Personality concerns the way we characteristically respondto other people and situations: How we relate to other people, how we tackleproblems, our emotionality and responsiveness to stress, and so on.Personality inventories are good examples of tests that assess disposition.Dispositions describe our preferred or typical ways of acting or thinking.Test items of these traits do not have right and wrong answers. Rather, theyattempt to measure how much or how little we possess of a specified trait or set oftraits (e.g. gregariousness, empathy, decisiveness). Most instruments designed tomeasure dispositions are administered without a time limit and stress the need forpeople to answer honestly and openly. But, in some situations, such openness maybe difficult to achieve (for example, if it is perceived that one’s chances of beingselected for a job depend on the results).Such problems are less likely to arise when personality and other measures ofdisposition are used in situations where one can be sure that it is in the testtaker’s best interests to co-operate and be honest (e.g. in clinical assessment orvocational guidance).Interest Inventories. While interests are also related to personality, measures ofinterests focus more on what sort of activities we find attractive and which wewould rather avoid. Interest inventories are designed to assess in a systematicmanner people’s likes and dislikes for different types of work or leisure activity.Satisfaction at work requires not only possessing the necessary skills to do the jobcompetently but also having sufficient interest in it. Like tests of personality, theseare not tests in the sense of having right and wrong answers.Interest inventories have an obvious application in educational and vocationalguidance and in staff development assessment situations in work, where peoplemay need help in sorting out what they do or do not want to do. They provide ameans of exploring new options with people, of suggesting areas of work that theywould not have otherwise considered. As with personality assessment, assessinginterests may provide a useful positive way by opening new doors for people in acareer guidance context.Both personality and interest assessment inventories are essentially differentin kind from ability tests, even though the same psychometric principles apply(the need for reliability, validity and standardisation). Such inventories are thewww.psychtesting.org.uk5
means of providing a more qualitative description of people. Most of the availablepersonality and interest tests are self-report or self-description instruments. Thatis, they are like a highly structured, written interview that has been standardisedand subjected to psychometric analysis. If properly used, they can provide valuablesources of data about personality and interests to supplement information obtainedfrom other sources (symptom checklists, performance analysis, references,interviews, and the like).Measures of Cognitive Style. Cognitive style describes how people think andhow they perceive and remember information. Cognitive style has similarities topersonality. For example some people tend to focus on the detail while others lookat the broad picture and miss the detail. People with similar cognitive styles tendto feel more positive about each other.Measures of Drive, Motivation and Need. Measures of motivation and need focuson the factors which drive us to action (such as the need for success) or cause usto refrain from action (such as the fear of failure). Many personality and interestmeasures also provide – either directly or indirectly – measures of need.People’s levels of drive or motivation can be thought of as having both state andtrait components. Some people are characteristically more driven than others:some people always seem to be on the go, seeking more and more work orresponsibility, while others are the opposite. This is the trait component.At the same time, any individual will vary in their level of drive from time to time.Some days they will feel they have more get-up-and-go than on other days. This isthe state component.Needs motivate us in that they tend to establish our priorities and our goals.Interest measures also provide some indication of motivation. Generally, peoplestrive hardest at those things that interest them most.Measures of maximum performanceMeasures of maximum performance measure how well people can do things, howmuch they know, how great their potential is, and so on. Many of these measuregeneral, rather abstract, characteristics (e.g. intellectual ability, verbal fluency,working memory, numerical reasoning) while others may seem more concrete andfunctional (clerical speed and accuracy, spelling, programming aptitude). Thedistinguishing feature about such tests is that they tend to contain questions,problems or tasks for which there are right and wrong (or good and bad) answersor solutions.Maximum performance tests can focus on what people know or can do (attainmenttests) or what they are capable of knowing or doing (tests of ability). Tests ofattainment are used to assess knowledge and skills acquired through educationand instruction. Examples include tests of literacy, mathematics knowledge,foreign language proficiency or mastery in a craft. Such tests tend to be narrowlydefined in content and targeted at the achievement of specific standards.6www.psychtesting.org.uk
Tests of ability assess broader areas of what a person can do. While scores on suchtests are influenced by education and training, they are not designed to assessspecific areas of knowledge or skill. Examples of such tests are measures of verbalreasoning (the ability to comprehend, interpret and draw conclusions from oral orwritten language), spatial reasoning (the ability to understand and interpret spatialrelations between objects) and working memory (the ability to retain informationwhile using it to perform a task)There are also performance tests which measure abilities such as motor skill, handeye co-ordination and ability to replicate patterns and shapes.Tests of maximum performance are usually timed. In some cases the timelimitation is very strict and the emphasis is placed on how quickly a person canrespond to the items. Tests that contain relatively easy items, but with a stricttime limit are called speed tests. In other cases, the time limit is designed to allowmost people to complete all the test items, and the focus is on how many they areable to get right. If the score you get is mainly affected by your ability to answerthe questions rather than your speed the test is a power test.AptitudeThe term ‘Aptitude Test’ is often used very generally to refer to any instrumentthat may be used to assess how well an individual is likely to perform in a specifictraining programme or job. Attainment tests, ability tests and personality tests areall used to predict future performance, and so the term ‘aptitude’ has more to dowith prediction than with a specific category of test.Psychological dysfunctionTests of psychological dysfunction are among the most complex form of psychologicaltest in dealing with areas that are both sensitive and difficult to diagnose. They arealso among the most diverse group of tests in covering a number of conditions andsymptoms, and their use requires both general clinical expertise as well as specificknowledge of a particular test. They include assessments of neuropsychologicaldamage resulting from physical trauma or from pathological conditions.Areas of applicationIn addition to these categories of tests, broad distinctions can also be made interms of the settings in which psychological tests are most frequently used.These are:1. Occupational settings in which tests are used in careers guidance, to help selectpersonnel, to assess their training and development needs, and in promotion.2. Educational settings in which tests are used to diagnose learning difficulties,assess levels of educational attainment, learning and instructional needs, andfor entry into secondary and tertiary levels of education.www.psychtesting.org.uk7
3. Health-related and Forensic settings in which tests are used to identify andassess emotional and behavioural conditions and disorders, assess personalityand evaluate risk.In each of these three main settings, one can further divide the areas ofapplication into more specific domains or areas of knowledge. Test users whoare skilled and competent in the use of tests in one domain may often need agreat deal of further training to use tests in other domains – even within thesame general setting (i.e. health related, educational or occupational). This isnot so much because the tests may be more difficult to use, but because theproper interpretation of any test depends on the user’s knowledge of the area ofapplication as well as their knowledge of the test.In all three settings, tests are used for three principal reasons:1. They provide a standardised method for assessing and/or diagnosingindividuals.2. They provide such information more efficiently than most other methods ofassessment (e.g. interviews or observation).3. They provide access to the measurement of qualities that are difficult to assessthrough other means.Psychological tests measure qualities that are less tangible than physicalmeasurements such as height, length, mass or speed. Even when there isobservable evidence of a condition such as a reading problem or behaviouraldisorder, the extent and causes of such problems may not be clear from thephysical evidence available. So, in contrast to the manifest, observable featuresof physical measures (i.e. they can be experienced directly by our senses),psychological tests often measure qualities that are hidden, covert or latent(i.e. they cannot be directly or so easily experienced through our senses). As such,psychological tests may provide the only reliable and efficient means of assessment.What should I look for in a psychological test?The introduction to the ITC Guidelines on Test Use states that:‘Tests should be supported by evidence of reliability and validity for theirintended purpose. Evidence should be provided to support the inferencesthat may be drawn from the scores on the test.’ReliabilityReliability is concerned with how accurate or precise a test score is. When a testis administered, the outcome is an observed score on the quality measured bythe test. However, all measurement procedures, physical as well as psychological,are subject to some degree of error. In order to know how much weight to placeon the observed score, you need to know how accurate the test is as a measuringdevice. Measures of test reliability allow us to estimate that accuracy. This is a keycharacteristic of psychometric testing and what makes it so much more valuable8www.psychtesting.org.uk
than other forms of measurement: For a psychometric test, we can quantify thedegree of accuracy of the scores we obtain.Being able to quantify measurement error has important consequences for how weuse tests. For example, if you are carrying out an in-depth individual assessmentof a person, on the basis of which you will be making some important decision,then you need a high degree of accuracy in your measurement. On the otherhand, if you are using a test to sort people into one of two groups, and you are notconcerned too much about making a few errors in this process, then the reliabilityof the test can be less. In general, reliability can be increased by making testslonger, and is decreased by shortening them. However, for a given test length,reliability will depend a lot on how well the test has been designed and developed.Reliability is one of the most important topics in training in test use.Test users need to get to grips with the concept of reliability, with understandinghow it can be measured and understanding what its implications are.ValidityValidity is concerned with what the test score actually measures. It is insufficientto merely state that a test is a measure of, say, mechanical aptitude, tolera
This guide is about using psychological tests and the principles of good test use. This guide is designed to answer seven questions in two main areas. Questions about tests: 1. . tests) or what they are capable of knowing or doing (tests of ability). Tests of
4.302 Psychological Testing Adolescent/Child 6.400 Outpatient Treatment 6.403 Psychological Testing The Psychological Evaluation Request (PER) form for pre-authorization of neuropsychological or psychological testing, as well as a list of psychological tests, is
Intelligence tests and personality tests are indeed psychological tests—and they are indeed used to identify giftedness and diagnose psychological disorders. However, this is only a snapshot of what psychological testing is all about. There are many types of psychological tests, and they have many different purposes.
In general, the separate testing team starts test execution with usability testing. During this test, the team concentrates on user-friendliness of the software build screens. The usability testing consists of 2 sub tests. a) User Interface Testing b) Manuals Support Testing a) User - interface Testing: -
Some Types of Testing User Acceptance Test: Test according to specification or requirement. Functional Test: Test one function (or feature) expected output. Unit Test: Test the smallest "unit" of testable code (in isolation). Integration Test: Test the interaction of "units" in 1 or more systems. Behavioral Test: Automated UAT or black box testing.
Psychological Research Methods Excavating Human Behaviors. 2 Thinking Critically with Psychological Science Chapter 1. 3 Thinking Critically with Psychological Science The Need for Psychological Science The limits of Intuition and Comm
Learning objectives: At the conclusion of the course, students should be able to: 1. Describe the historical origins of psychological testing, as well as recent and future trends; 2. Discuss key statistical concepts underlying psychological testing, and identify and describe the characteristics of valid and reliable psychological measures; 3.
4 conducting psychological assessment This text is a primer for the process of psychological assessment and testing rather than a guide to using any single test. Six major processes make up any psychological assessment: 1. conducting a clinical interview 2. choosing a battery of tests 3. administering, coding, scoring, and interpreting tests
1. Psychological Testing and Assessment 13 2. Historical, Cultural, and Legal/Ethical Considerations 47 II. The Science of Psychological Measurement 83 3. A Statistics Refresher 83 4. Of Tests and Testing 113 5. Reliability 151 6. Validity 184 7. Utility 220 8. Test Development 245 III. The Assessment of Intelligence 289 9. Intelligence and Its .
