Basics
The person who holds the most responsibility in the assessment process
The counselor
This type of data provides the number of individuals who obtain each score on a test, showing the distribution of scores.
Frequency distribution
The legislation that requires each state to have a system for identifying and evaluating children with disabilities.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004
Correlation coefficients range from.
-1.0 to 1.0
Why do counselors use assessments?
Assessments are commonly used to identify client problems and also a client’s __________.
Strengths
The spread of scores indicating variability between the highest and lowest scores.
Range
Counselors must be aware of these two laws, which governs the privacy and security of clients’ educational and health records.
FERPA & HIPPA
An instrument that measures consistently but does not measure what it was designed to measure is ____.
Reliable but not valid
If an assessment indicates that it is Level A, what qualifications must the administrator have?
No formal qualifications
This type of assessment is typically a questionnaire or test that measures traits or abilities using the same procedures for everyone.
Standardized assessment
A scale that ranks items in order, but the differences between ranks are not necessarily equal.
Ordinal
What is the term for a counselor halving the number of questions on an assessment before administering it?
In Classical Test Theory, how is reliability defined?
The degree to which a score is free from random error.
When is it beneficial to use a norm-referenced instrument?
It allows you to compare an individual's score with that of another who took the same instrument.
This type of assessment compares an individual’s performance to a predetermined standard or learning goal.
Criterion-referenced assessment
This type of score transformation allows counselors to compare raw test results across different measures by converting them to a standard scale with a mean of 50.
T-score
Name three responsibilities of counselors during the assessment process.
The type of reliability used when a scale is administered twice to the same participants.
Test-retest reliability
What is the type of reliability that uses different test forms that should produce equivalent scores?
Parallel or alternate form reliability
If a child scores a 92 on a spelling test, which is in the 90th percentile, what does this mean? Describe it using appropriate language gleaned from the text and lecture.
90% of the students had a score at or below 92
In a normal distribution, the percentage of scores within two standard deviations of the mean.
95%
When an assessment tool seems to be discriminatory or culturally biased, what should the counselor do to avoid legal or ethical issues?
Find a different assessment or adjust interpretation.
A counselor designing a new anxiety questionnaire wants to be sure it reflects every dimension of anxiety in each question; this is one type of validity. Later, they compare scores to other established anxiety measures; this is another type.
Content validity and construct validity
Max recently took the SAT in preparation for college applications. He received a score of 740 on the reading and writing section. The results also tell you that 68% of the time, his true score would fall between 736-744, and 95% of the time, his true score would fall between 732-748. What is the SEM?