Psychological testing

Psychological testing is the administration of psychological tests, which are designed to be "an objective
and standardized measure of a sample of behavior".[1] The term sample of behavior refers to an
individual's performance on tasks that have usually been prescribed beforehand. The samples of
behavior that make up a paper-and-pencil test, the most common type of test, are a series of items.
Performance on these items produce a test score. A score on a well-constructed test is believed to
reflect a psychological construct such as achievement in a school subject, cognitive ability, aptitude,
emotional functioning, personality, etc. Differences in test scores are thought to reflect individual
differences in the construct the test is supposed to measure. The science behind psychological testing
is psychometrics.

Psychological tests

A psychological test is an instrument designed to measure unobserved constructs, also known as latent
variables. Psychological tests are typically, but not necessarily, a series of tasks or problems that the
respondent has to solve. Psychological tests can strongly resemble questionnaires, which are also
designed to measure unobserved constructs, but differ in that psychological tests ask for a respondent's
maximum performance whereas a questionnaire asks for the respondent's typical performance.[2] A
useful psychological test must be both valid (i.e., there is evidence to support the specified
interpretation of the test results[3]) and reliable (i.e., internally consistent or give consistent results over
time, across raters, etc.).

It is important that people who are equal on the measured construct also have an equal probability of
answering the test items accurately .[4] For example, an item on a mathematics test could be "In a soccer
match two players get a red card; how many players are left in the end?"; however, this item also
requires knowledge of soccer to be answered correctly, not just mathematical ability. Group
membership can also influence the chance of correctly answering items (differential item functioning).
Often tests are constructed for a specific population, and this should be taken into account when
administering tests. If a test is invariant to some group difference (e.g. gender) in one population (e.g.
England) it does not automatically mean that it is also invariant in another population (e.g. Japan).

Psychological assessment is similar to psychological testing but usually involves a more comprehensive
assessment of the individual. Psychological assessment is a process that involves checking the
integration of information from multiple sources, such as tests of normal and abnormal personality,
tests of ability or intelligence, tests of interests or attitudes, as well as information from personal
interviews. Collateral information is also collected about personal, occupational, or medical history, such
as from records or from interviews with parents, spouses, teachers, or previous therapists or physicians.
A psychological test is one of the sources of data used within the process of assessment; usually more
than one test is used. Many psychologists do some level of assessment when providing services to
clients or patients, and may use for example, simple checklists to osis for treatment settings; to assess a
particular area of functioning or disability often for school settings; to help select type of treatment or to
assess treatment outcomes; to help courts decide issues such as child custody or competency to stand
trial; or to help assess job applicants or employees and provide career development counseling or
training.[5]

History

A Song Dynasty painting of candidates participating in the imperial examination, a rudimentary form of
psychological testing.

Physiognomy was used to assess personality traits based on an individual's outer appearance.

The first large-scale tests may have been examinations that were part of the imperial
examination system in China. The test, an early form of psychological testing, assessed candidates based
on their proficiency in topics such as civil law and fiscal policies.[6] Other early tests of intelligence were
made for entertainment rather than analysis.[7] Modern mental testing began in France in the 19th
century. It contributed to separating mental retardation from mental illness and reducing the neglect,
torture, and ridicule heaped on both groups.[8]

Englishman Francis Galton coined the terms psychometrics and eugenics, and developed a method for
measuring intelligence based on nonverbal sensory-motor tests. It was initially popular, but was
abandoned after the discovery that it had no relationship to outcomes such as college grades.[8][9] French
psychologist Alfred Binet, together with psychologists Victor Henri and Théodore Simon, after about 15
years of development, published the Binet-Simon test in 1905, which focused on verbal abilities. It was
intended to identify mental retardation in school children.[8]

The origins of personality testing date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when personality was
assessed through phrenology, the measurement of the human skull, and physiognomy, which assessed
personality based on a person's outer appearances.[10] These early pseudoscientific techniques were
eventually replaced with more empirical methods in the 20th century. One of the earliest modern
personality tests was the Woolworth Personality Data Sheet, a self-report inventory developed
for World War I and used for the psychiatric screening of new draftees.[10]

Principles

Proper psychological testing is conducted after vigorous research and development in contrast to quick
web-based or magazine questionnaires that say "Find out your Personality Color," or "What's your Inner
Age?" Proper psychological testing consists of the following:

 Standardization - All procedures and steps must be conducted with consistency and under the
same environment to achieve the same testing performance from those being tested.

 Objectivity - Scoring such that subjective judgments and biases are minimized, with results for
each test taker obtained in the same way.

 Test Norms - The average test score within a large group of people where the performance of
one individual can be compared to the results of others by establishing a point of comparison or
frame of reference.

 Reliability - Obtaining the same result after multiple testing.

 Validity - The type of test being administered must measure what it is intended to measure.[11]

Interpreting scores[edit]

Psychological tests, like many measurements of human characteristics, can be interpreted in a norm-
referenced or criterion-referenced manner. Norms are statistical representations of a population.
A norm-referenced score interpretation compares an individual's results on the test with the statistical
representation of the population. In practice, rather than testing a population, a representative sample
or group is tested. This provides a group norm or set of norms. One representation of norms is the Bell
curve (also called "normal curve"). Norms are available for standardized psychological tests, allowing for
an understanding of how an individual's scores compare with the group norms. Norm referenced scores
are typically reported on the standard score (z) scale or a rescaling of it.

A criterion-referenced interpretation of a test score compares an individual's performance to some

Often, test scores can be interpreted in both ways; answering 80% of the questions correctly on a
geography test could place a student at the 84th percentile (that is, the student performed better than
83% of the class and worse than 16% of the classmates), or a standard score of 1.0 or even 2.0.

Types[edit]
There are several broad categories of psychological tests:

IQ/achievement tests

IQ tests purport to be measures of intelligence, while achievement tests are measures of the use and
level of development of use of the ability. IQ (or cognitive) tests and achievement tests are common
norm-referenced tests. In these types of tests, a series of tasks is presented to the person being
evaluated, and the person's responses are graded according to carefully prescribed guidelines. After the
test is completed, the results can be compiled and compared to the responses of a norm group, usually
composed of people at the same age or grade level as the person being evaluated. IQ tests which
contain a series of tasks typically divide the tasks into verbal (relying on the use of language) and
performance, or non-verbal (relying on eye–hand types of tasks, or use of symbols or objects). Examples
of verbal IQ test tasks are vocabulary and information (answering general knowledge questions). Non-
verbal examples are timed completion of puzzles (object assembly) and identifying images which fit a
pattern (matrix reasoning).

IQ tests (e.g., WAIS-IV, WISC-V, Cattell Culture Fair III, Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities-
IV, Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales V) and academic achievement tests (e.g. WIAT, WRAT, Woodcock-
Johnson Tests of Achievement-III) are designed to be administered to either an individual (by a trained
evaluator) or to a group of people (paper and pencil tests). The individually administered tests tend to
be more comprehensive, more reliable, more valid and generally to have
better psychometric characteristics than group-administered tests. However, individually administered
tests are more expensive to administer because of the need for a trained administrator
(psychologist, school psychologist, or psychometrician).

Public safety employment tests

Vocations within the public safety field (i.e., fire service, law enforcement, corrections, emergency
medical services) often require Industrial and Organizational Psychology tests for initial employment and
advancement throughout the ranks. The National Firefighter Selection Inventory - NFSI, the National
Criminal Justice Officer Selection Inventory - NCJOSI, and the Integrity Inventory are prominent
examples of these tests.

Attitude tests

Attitude test assess an individual's feelings about an event, person, or object. Attitude scales are used in
marketing to determine individual (and group) preferences for brands, or items. Typically attitude tests
use either a Thurstone scale, or Likert Scale to measure specific items.

Neuropsychological tests

Main article: Neuropsychological test

These tests consist of specifically designed tasks used to measure a psychological function known to be
linked to a particular brain structure or pathway. Neuropsychological tests can be used in a clinical
context to assess impairment after an injury or illness known to affect neurocognitive functioning. When
used in research, these tests can be used to contrast neuropsychological abilities across experimental
groups.

Infant and Preschool Assessment

Due to the fact that infants and preschool aged children have limited capacities of communication,
psychologists are unable to use traditional tests to assess them. Therefore, many tests have been
designed just for children ages birth to around six years of age. These tests usually vary with age
respectively from assessments of reflexes and developmental milestones, to sensory and motor skills,
language skills, and simple cognitive skills.

Common tests for this age group are split into categories: Infant Ability, Preschool Intelligence, and
School Readiness. Common infant ability tests include: Gesell Developmental Schedules (GDS) which
measures the developmental progress of infants, Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) which
tests newborn behavior, reflexes, and responses, Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development (OSPD)
which assesses infant intellectual abilities, and Bayley-III which tests mental ability and motor skills.

Common preschool intelligence tests include: McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) which is
similar to an infant IQ test, Differential Ability Scales (DAS) which can be used to test for learning
disability, Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-III (WPPSI-III) and Stanford-Binet
Intelligence Scales for Early Childhood which could be seen as infant versions of IQ tests, and Fagan Test
of Infant Intelligence (FTII) which tests recognition memory.

Finally, some common school readiness tests are: Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of
Learning-III (DIAL-III) which assesses motor, cognitive, and language skills, Denver II which tests motor,
social, and language skills, and Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME) which is a
measure of the extent to which a child's home environment facilitates school readiness.

Infant and preschool assessments, since they do not predict later childhood nor adult abilities, are
mainly useful for testing if a child is experiencing developmental delay or disabilities. They are also
useful for testing individual intelligence and ability, and, as aforementioned, there are some specifically
designed to test school readiness and determine which children may struggle more in school.

Personality tests

Main article: Personality test

Psychological measures of personality are often described as either objective tests or projective tests.
The terms "objective test" and "projective test" have recently come under criticism in the Journal of
Personality Assessment. The more descriptive "rating scale or self-report measures" and "free response
measures" are suggested, rather than the terms "objective tests" and "projective tests," respectively.
Objective tests (Rating scale or self-report measure)

Objective tests have a restricted response format, such as allowing for true or false answers or rating
using an ordinal scale. Prominent examples of objective personality tests include the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-IV,[12] Child Behavior
Checklist,[13] Symptom Checklist 90[14] and the Beck Depression Inventory.[15] Objective personality tests
can be designed for use in business for potential employees, such as the NEO-PI, the 16PF, and
the OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire), all of which are based on the Big Five taxonomy. The
Big Five, or Five Factor Model of normal personality, has gained acceptance since the early 1990s when
some influential meta-analyses (e.g., Barrick & Mount 1991) found consistent relationships between
the Big Five personality factors and important criterion variables.

Another personality test based upon the Five Factor Model is the Five Factor Personality Inventory –
Children (FFPI-C.).[16]

Projective tests (Free response measures)

Projective tests allow for a freer type of response. An example of this would be the Rorschach test, in
which a person states what each of ten ink blots might be.

Projective testing became a growth industry in the first half of the 1900s, with doubts about the
theoretical assumptions behind projective testing arising in the second half of the 1900s.[17] Some
projective tests are used less often today because they are more time consuming to administer and
because the reliability and validity are controversial.

As improved sampling and statistical methods developed, much controversy regarding the utility and
validity of projective testing has occurred. The use of clinical judgement rather than norms and statistics
to evaluate people's characteristics has raised criticism that projectives are deficient and unreliable
(results are too dissimilar each time a test is given to the same person). However, as more objective
scoring and interpretive systems supported by more rigorous scientific research have emerged, many
practitioners continue to rely on projective testing. Projective tests may be useful in creating inferences
to follow up with other methods. The most widely used scoring system for the Rorschach is the Exner
system of scoring.[18] Another common projective test is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT),[19] which
is often scored with Westen's Social Cognition and Object Relations Scales[20] and Phebe Cramer's
Defense Mechanisms Manual.[21] Both "rating scale" and "free response" measures are used in
contemporary clinical practice, with a trend toward the former.

Other projective tests include the House-Tree-Person test, the Animal Metaphor Test.

The number of tests specifically meant for the field of sexology is quite limited. The field
of sexology provides different psychological evaluation devices in order to examine the various aspects
of the discomfort, problem or dysfunction, regardless of whether they are individual or relational ones.