Chapter 3

A
Written Report
By Altares, Ruth M.

Bachelor of Science in Psychology

A Historical Perspective

 It is believed that tests and testing programs first came into being in China as early as 2200
B.C.E. (DuBois, 1966, 1970).
 During the Song dynasty, emphasis was placed on knowledge of classical literature. Test takers
who demonstrated their command of the classics were perceived as having acquired the
wisdom of the past; they were therefore entitled to a government position.
 Also intriguing from a historical perspective are ancient Greco-Roman writings indicative of
Attempts to categorize people in terms of personality types.
 In 1859, a book was published entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
by Charles Darwin (1809–1882). In this important, far-reaching work, Darwin argued That
chance variation in species would be selected or rejected by nature according to adaptivity and
survival value. He further argued that humans had descended from the ape as a result of such
chance genetic variations.
 Galton’s initial work on heredity was done with sweet peas, in part because there tended to be
Fewer variations among the peas in a single pod. In this work, Galton pioneered the use of a
Statistical concept central to psychological experimentation and testing: the coefficient of
Correlation. Although Karl Pearson (1857–1936) developed the product-moment correlation
Technique, its roots can be traced directly to the work of Galton (Magnello & Spies, 1984).

 Assessment was also an important activity at the first experimental psychology laboratory,
Founded at the University of Leipzig in Germany by Wilhelm Max Wundt (1832–1920), a medical
Doctor whose title at the university was professor of philosophy.

The Twentieth Century

 Much of the nineteenth-century testing that could be described as psychological in nature

involved the measurement of sensory abilities, reaction time, and the like.

Generally, the public was fascinated by such testing. However, there was no widespread belief
that testing for variables such as reaction time had any applied value. But all of that would
change in the early 1900s with the birth of the first formal tests of intelligence, tests that could
really be useful for reasons readily understandable to anyone who had school age children. As
we will see, public receptivity to Psychological tests would shift from mild curiosity to outright
enthusiasm as more and more Instruments that purportedly quantified mental ability were
introduced. Soon there would be tests to measure sundry mental characteristics such as
personality, interests, attitudes, values, and widely varied mental abilities. It all began with a
single test designed for use with young Paris pupils.
The measurement of intelligence

 As early as 1895, Alfred Binet (1857–1911) and his colleague Victor Henri published several
articles in which they argued for the measurement of abilities such as memory and social
comprehension.
 Ten years later, Binet and collaborator Theodore Simon published a 30-item “measuring scale of
intelligence” designed to help identify mentally retarded Paris schoolchildren (Binet & Simon,
1905).
 In 1939, David Wechsler, a clinical psychologist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, introduced
a test designed to measure adult intelligence.

 A natural outgrowth of the Individually administered intelligence test devised by Binet was the
Group intelligence test.

The measurement of personality

 Only eight years after the publication of Binet’s scale, the field of psychology was being criticized
for being too test oriented (Sylvester, 1913). By the late 1930s, approximately four thousand
different psychological tests were in print (Buros,1938), and “clinical psychology” was
synonymous with “mental testing” (Institute for Juvenile Research, 1937; Tulchin, 1939).

World War I had brought with it not only the need to screen the Intellectual functioning of
9recruits but also the need to screen for recruits’ general adjustment.A government Committee
on Emotional Fitness chaired by psychologist Robert S. Woodworth was assigned the task of
developing a measure of adjustment and emotional stability that could be administered quickly
and efficiently to groups of recruits. The committee developed several experimental versions of
what were, in essence, paper-and pencil psychiatric interviews. To disguise the true purpose of
one such test, the questionnaire was labeled as a “Personal Data Sheet.” draftees and
volunteers were asked to indicate yes or no to a series of questions that probed for the
existence of various kinds of psychopathology.

 However, there are also compelling arguments against respondents supplying such information.
For example, respondents may have poor insight into themselves.

 A projective test Is one in which an individual is assumed to “project” onto some ambiguous
stimulus his or her own unique needs, fears, hopes, and motivation. .

 Perhaps the best known of all projective tests is the Rorschach, a series of inkblots developed by
the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach.

The academic and applied traditions

 Like the development of its parent field of psychology, the development of psychological
measurement can be traced along two distinct threads: the academic and the applied. In the
tradition of Galton, Wundt, and other scholars, psychological testing and assessment are
 practiced today in university psychology laboratories as a means of furthering knowledge about
human and animal behavior.

There is also a very strong applied tradition, one that dates back in modern times to the work of
people like Binet and in ancient times to China and the administration of competitive civil
service examinations.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

 Laws are rules that individuals must obey for the good of the society as a whole—or rules
thought to be for the good of society as a whole. Some laws are and have been relatively
uncontroversial. For example, the law that mandates driving on the right side of the road has
not been a subject of debate, a source of emotional soul-searching, or a stimulus to civil
disobedience.

Whereas a body of laws is a body of rules, a body of ethics is a body of principles of right, Proper, or
good conduct.

Public Concerns
The assessment enterprise has never been very well understood by the public. Even today, it is
unfortunate that we may hear statements symptomatic of misunderstanding with regard to tests(e.g.,
“The only thing tests measure is the ability to take tests”).

 Possible consequences of public misunderstanding include fear, anger, legislation, litigation,

and administrative regulations.

Anticipating the present-day Standards, Ruch (1925), a measurement specialist, proposed a number of
standards for tests and guidelines for test development. He also wrote of “the urgent need for a fact-
finding organization which will undertake impartial, experimental, and statistical evaluations of tests”
(Ruch, 1933). History records that one team of measurement experts even took on the (overly)
ambitious task of attempting to rank all published tests designed for use in educational settings. The
result was a pioneering book (Kelley, 1927) that provided test users with Information needed to
compare the merits of published tests. However, given the pace at which test instruments were being
published, this resource required regular updating. And so, Oscar Buros was not the first measurement
professional to undertake a comprehensive testing of the tests. He was, however, the most tenacious in
updating and revising the information.

 Legislation

In the 1970s, numerous states enacted minimum competency testing programs: formal testing
programs designed to be used in decisions regarding various aspects of students’ education.

-Truth-in-testing legislation was also passed at the state level beginning in the 1980s. The primary
objective of these laws was to provide testtakers with a means of learning the criteria by which they
are being judged.
Some truth-in-testing laws require providing descriptions of;

(1) The test’s purpose and its subject matter,

(2) The knowledge and skills the test purports to measure,
(3) Procedures for ensuring accuracy in scoring,
(4) Procedures for notifying testtakers of errors in scoring, and
(5) Procedures for ensuring the testtaker’s confidentiality.

 Litigation

Litigation has sometimes been referred to as “judge-made law” because it typically comes in the form of
a ruling by a court. And while it is true that judges do, in essence, create law by their Rulings, these
rulings are seldom made in a vacuum. Rather, judges typically rely on prior rulings and on other people
—most notably, expert witnesses— to assist in their judgments.

 A psychologist acting as an expert witness in criminal litigation may testify on matters such as
the competence of a defendant to stand trial, the competence of a witness to give testimony, or
the sanity of a defendant entering a plea of “not guilty by reason of insanity.”
 A psychologist acting as an expert witness in a civil matter could conceivably offer opinions on
many different types of issues ranging from the parenting skills of a parent in a divorce case to
the capabilities of a factory worker prior to sustaining a head injury on the job.
 In a malpractice case, an expert witness might testify about how reasonable and professional
the actions taken by a fellow psychologist were and whether any reasonable and prudent
practitioner would have engaged in the same or similar actions (Cohen, 1979).

The concerns of the Profession

 As early as 1895, the American Psychological Association (APA) formed its first committee on
mental measurement.
The committee was charged with investigating various aspects of the relatively new practice of
testing. Another APA committee on measurements was formed in 1906 To further study various
testing-related issues and problems.
 In 1916 and again in 1921, symposia dealing with various issues surrounding the expanding uses
of tests were sponsored (Mentality Tests, 1916; Intelligence and Its Measurement, 1921).
 In 1954, APA published its Technical recommendations for Psychological Tests and Diagnostic
Tests, a document that set forth testing standards and technical recommendations. The
following year, another professional organization, The National Educational Association
(working in collaboration with the National Council on measurements Used in Education—now
known as the National Council on Measurement) published its Technical Recommendations for
Achievement Tests.

The APA and related professional organizations in the United States have made available numerous
reference works and publications designed to delineate ethical, sound practice in the field of
psychological testing and assessment.
Test-user qualifications

 As early as 1950, an APA Committee on Ethical Standards for Psychology published report called
Ethical Standards for the Distribution of Psychological Tests and Diagnostic Aids.
 Level A: Tests or aids that can adequately be administered, scored, and interpreted with the aid
of the manual and a general orientation to the kind of institution or organization in which one is
working (for instance, achievement or proficiency tests).
 Level B: Tests or aids that require some technical knowledge of test construction and use and of
supporting psychological and educational fields such as statistics, individual differences,
psychology of adjustment, personnel psychology, and guidance (e.g., aptitude tests and
adjustment inventories applicable to normal populations).
 Level C: Tests and aids that require substantial understanding of testing and supporting
psychological fields together with supervised experience in the use of these devices (form
Instance, projective tests, individual mental tests).
 In general, professional standards promulgated by APA (American Educational Research
association et al., 1999), the National Association of School Psychologists (2000), and other
professional organizations state that psychological tests should be used only by qualified
persons.
 Furthermore, there is an ethical mandate to take reasonable steps to prevent the misuse of the
tests and the information jockeying for turf, done solely for financial gain. A more charitable and
perhaps more realistic view is that such actions benefit society at large. It is essential to the
survival of the assessment enterprise that certain assessments be conducted by people qualified
to conduct them by virtue of their education, training, and experience.
 In the past, psychologists have been lax in differentiating psychological testing from
psychological assessment. However, continued laxity may prove to be a costly indulgence, given
current legislative and judicial trends. They provide. The obligations of professionals to test
takers are set forth in a document called the Code of Fair Testing Practices in education.
 Jointly authored and/or sponsored by the Joint Committee of Testing Practices (a coalition of
APA,AERA, NCME, the American Association for Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and
dvelopment, and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association), this document presents
standards for educational test developers in four areas: (1) developing/selecting tests, (2)
interpreting scores, (3) striving for fairness, and (4) informing testtakers.

Testing people with disabilities

-Difficulties analogous to those concerning test takers from linguistic and cultural minorities are present
when testing people with disabling conditions. Specifically, these difficulties may include (1)
transforming the test into a form that can be taken by the testtaker, (2) transforming the responses of
the testtaker so that they are scorable, and (3) meaningfully interpreting the test data.

Computerized test administration, scoring, and interpretation

 o Access to test administration, scoring, and interpretation software. Despite purchase restrictions
on software and technological safeguards to guard against unauthorized copying, software may
still be copied. Unlike test kits, which may contain manipulatable objects, manuals, and other
tangible items, a computer-administered test may be easily copied and duplicated.
o Comparability of pencil-and-paper and computerized versions of tests. Many tests once
available only in a paper-and-pencil format are now available in computerized form as well. In
many instances, the comparability of the traditional and the computerized forms of the test has
not been researched or has only insufficiently been researched.
o The value of computerized test interpretations. Many tests available for computerized
administration also come with computerized scoring and interpretation procedures. Thousands
of words are spewed out every day in the form of test interpretation results, but the value of
these words in many cases is questionable.
o Unprofessional, unregulated “psychological testing” online. A growing number of Internet sites
purport to provide, usually for a fee, online psychological tests. Yet the vast majority of the
tests offered would not meet a psychologist’s standards. Assessment professionals wonder
about the long-term effect of these largely unprofessional and unregulated “psychological
testing” sites.

The Rights of Testtakers

-As prescribed by the Standards and in some cases by law, some of the rights that test users accord to
testtakers are the right of informed consent, the right to be informed of test findings, the right to privacy
and confi dentiality, and the right to the least stigmatizing label.

The right of informed consent

-Testtakers have a right to know why they are being evaluated, how the test data will be used, and what
(if any) information will be released to whom. With full knowledge of such information, testtakers give
their informed consent to be tested.

-If a testtaker is incapable of providing an informed consent to testing, such consent may be obtained
from a parent or a legal representative. Consent must be in written rather than oral form. the written
form should specify (1) the general purpose of the testing, (2) the specific reason it is being undertaken
in the present case, and (3) the general type of instruments to be administered.

The right to be informed of Test Findings

-Testtakers have a right to be informed, in language they can understand, of the nature of the findings
with respect to a test they have taken. They are also entitled to know what recommendations are being
made as a consequence of the test data. If the test results, findings, or recommendations made on the
basis of test data are voided for any reason (such as irregularities in the test administration), testtakers
have a right to know that as well.

The right to privacy and confidentiality

The concept of the privacy right “recognizes the freedom of the individual to pick and choose for
himself the time, circumstances, and particularly the extent to which he wishes to share or withhold
from others his attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and opinions” (Shah, 1969, p. 57).
Confidentiality may be distinguished from privilege in that, whereas “confidentiality concerns matters of
communication outside the courtroom, privilege protects clients from disclosure in judicial proceedings”
(Jagim et al., 1978, p. 459). Privilege is not absolute.

 If these data are stored in a filing cabinet, then the cabinet should be locked and preferably
made of steel.
 If these data are stored in a computer, electronic safeguards must be taken to ensure only
authorized access.
 The individual or institution should have a reasonable policy covering the length of time that
records are stored and when, if ever, the records will be deemed to be outdated, invalid, or
useful only from an academic perspective.

In general, it is not a good policy to maintain all records in perpetuity. Policies in conformance wiith
privacy laws should also be in place governing the conditions under which requests for release of
records to a third party will be honored.

References:

Cohen, R.J., Swerdik, M. E. and Sturman, E., 2013. Psychological Testing and Assessment: An
Introduction to Tests and Measurement, 8th Edition. New York, NY:McGraw-Hill