Test Basics
Name 2 factors that correlate to higher standardized test scores (ACT, GRE, etc.)
SES, coaching/tutoring, schooling, age
Psychologists generally define this term as relatively stable and distinctive patters of behavior that characterize an individual and their reactions to the environment
Personality
Positives
Lots of research done studying it, revised in recent times, huge sample of control and clinical individuals, easy to administer
Negatives
May not be applicable to everyone depending on language or cultural or ethnic background. True/False answers make follow up testing essential
Which of the projective personality tests you studies has better standardization?
Thematic Apperception Test
Describe what unqualified individualism is and how it differs from the quota method?
U. ind. = Merit alone
Quota = % available for each type of "group"
What type of test measures a persons knowledge or skills that they have already learned?
Achievement
"Feeling nervous right now" is a personality ____
Someone who is "a nervous person" is describing their personality _____
State; trait
One of the largest criticisms of the MMPI was about their control group/clinical group? which one and why?
Control, because small demographic area, low education, rural, related to those in the clinical
How does a projective personality tests work...i.e. what is the theory behind how it works?
Give an example of something that might cause systematic bias in a test
Think of things that consistently impact the test in the same manner, are not random or even reliable
Unlike an achievement test, this type of tests aims to predict a person's capacity for future learning or performance
Aptitude
When creating personality tests, some people use an approach that relies on statistics, what approach is this called?
Empirical approach
Required reading level needed to take the MMPI and the MMPI-II
6th; 8th
High sensitivity is risk for many false pos/neg
High specificity is risk for many false pos/neg
false positives (diagnosed but don't actually have it)
false negatives (not diagnosed, but actually have it)
Some tests seem to show biased results (possibly due to cultural factors or due to actual test bias), name a couple of real world score differences we see.
Women score lower on the SAT but have higher grades;
Older age individuals score lower on the GRE
Women and some minority groups score lower on the LSAT
Some minority groups score higher on the SAT/ACT
Describe 2 positives and 2 negatives of group-administered tests
Positives:
Cost efficient, scoring is objective, standardized, useful norms for comparison,
Negatives:
Little flexibility, cannot observe individual behavior, less individual interpretation of test scores, assumes everyone had the same experience
What two parts make up the deductive approach, and what two parts make up the empirical approach?
Logical-content and Theoretical
Criterion-group and Factor analytic
on the MMPI-2, what is a code type?
When you looking at the 2 (or sometime more) significant codes on someones clinical score to find underlying connections to diagnoses/symptoms/others
If you worry you have a disease requires extremely intensive and costly treatment, do you want this test to be highly sensitive or highly specific?
Specific, because if you are given a false diagnosis you go through the intense treatment for nothing
In a criterion regression plot, let us say that you have two separate lines for two separate groups. Group A's regression line is higher than group B's, but you collapse your prediction into a single average line. Did you over or under predict the scores for group A?
Under-Predict
This term describes how consistently two or more different judges agree when observing the same thing
inter-rater reliability
Name all five parts of the BIG 5 personality
Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neroticism
OCEAN
Someone scored a 60 on one of the MMPI-2s scales. Is this clinically significant? Why or why not?
No, because it is 65 or above (1.5 std) on the t scale which is mean 50 and std of 10
Which of the following is an example of a moral issue in the field of testing?
Right to know outcomes.
Describe how differential item functioning works.
When individuals from different "groups" are shown to miss certain questions, we often eliminate these questions in a form of preventing future bias.