Assignment 1: Purpose and Construction of Tests
Introduction
You explored why tests exist and how they developed historically. Now, you delve into the contemporary context of tests to explore modern uses of psychological tests for specific contexts. You probably have taken the SAT, GRE, or similar tests at some point in your educational career. These tests measure academic achievement. They must be used in educational contexts in order to have construct validity. They cannot, for instance, be used to measure personality or job aptitude, or to make a psychological diagnosis, because they do not measure those constructs, no matter the context. Most quality assessments have been developed carefully over a period of decades, undergoing many revisions to improve construct validity and accuracy of prediction. Educational tests such as these may be examples of tests with which you are familiar in your everyday lives.
You explore many areas of applied testing (e.g., counseling, organizational, educational, and clinical), including what tests to select for particular purposes and the basics of test construction.
Objectives
Students will:
• Compare norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests
• Justify the use of psychological tests for specific contexts
Readings
• Anastasi, A., & Urbina, S. (1997). Psychological testing (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
o Chapter 17, "Major Contexts of Current Test Use"
American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education. (2014). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.
o Chapter 4, "Test Design and Development"
Reckase, M. D. (1996). Test construction in the 1990s: Recent approaches every psychologist should know. Psychological Assessment, 8(4), 354-359.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Schwarz, N., &Oyserman, D. (2001). Asking questions about behavior: Cognition, communication, and questionnaire construction. American Journal of Evaluation, 22(2), 127-160.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Wiggins, J. S., & Pincus, A. L. (1992). Personality structure and assessment. Annual Review of Psychology, 43, 473-504.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Final Project Dataset: MoneyData.sav
Note: You will use this file to complete this week's Assignment
Discussion: Test Uses
Testing is useful in any setting that requires objective information to make decisions about people. Educational and occupational testing are two broad areas that use testing extensively. You may have taken educational tests such as the GRE or SAT, and you have probably taken hundreds of classroom tests at this point in your education. Occupational testing can match people with jobs and careers or help select job candidates. Clinical and counseling psychology also use applied testing. Tests used by these types of psychologists can help people understand themselves better and can be used for personal guidance. In addition, tests can assist with mental health diagnosis and treatment planning.
Tests can be used to measure many different personal characteristics: intelligence, personality, skill or aptitude, psychopathology, and interest. Additionally, several tests can be used together as part of a test battery. An important aspect of testing is to understand which tests to use in a particular situation, in order to answer specific questions and make the best decisions.
Select three tests (one from each of three different categories, e.g., intelligence and vocational interest) from the list below. Research the tests you selected using the Mental Measurements Yearbook database in the Walden Library. Then consider how you might use each of these three tests in a specific context and why.
• Intelligence Tests:
o Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 4th Edition (WAIS-IV)
o Stanford-Binet, 5th Edition
o Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC)
Academic Achievement Tests:
o Wide Range Achievement Test, 4th Edition (WRAT4)
o Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement
Vocational Interest Tests:
o Career Assessment Inventory
o Self-Directed Search
o Strong Interest Inventory
Test of Personality/Psychopathology:
o Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, 2 (MMPI-2)
o Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, 2 (MCMI-III)
o 16-PF Myers-Briggs NEO-PI-R
With these thoughts in mind:
Post a brief description of the three tests you selected. Then explain appropriate uses of these tests. Finally, describe how you might use each test in a specific context and provide a rationale for using each test in the context described.
Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources.
Assignment 2: Introduction to Assessment Project
Constructing a useful psychological test is a meticulous process. First, you must formulate a clear, empirically based definition of what is to be measured and carefully consider the items and response formats that would best measure this construct. The test items are created based on a theory or by sampling a domain of knowledge. Subject-matter experts are often called upon to generate and evaluate the initial test items. The test is then given to a large sample of people, and, after careful analysis, the statistical properties of each item are scrutinized, and decisions are made about item retention, elimination, and revision.
As part of this class, you complete many of the steps necessary to construct a test. Test construction can be broken into two main phases. In phase one, you create test items. In phase two, you gather and analyze data from those items in order to choose the best items, (i.e., those that best measure the construct you have identified and defined). Ideally, your assignment would be to create items, gather data, and then analyze the data that you gathered. Unfortunately, test construction generally requires data from hundreds of participants, which is impractical to do over the course of one quarter. Therefore, your assignment will be broken down into two parts:
1. First, you design a test. You decide on a construct, write your test specifications, create test items, and have your classmates review your items.
2. Then, instead of gathering data on your own test, you are provided with a set of test data to analyze.
Consider what you would like your proposed test to measure. You describe this construct using evidence from the literature and submit it to your Instructor for approval this week. Additionally, you should install the IBM-SPSS software on your computer and open the dataset in this week's Learning Resources. Although you do not need to analyze this dataset in any way this week, you do begin to perform calculations on it next week. For now, familiarize yourself with how to open the dataset using SPSS.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.