Research Paper On Psychological Testing

A psychological test can be defined as a measure of an individual’s observable behaviour. In that case, during a psychological test, an individual is asked to perform specific standard tasks where the performance is observed, measured and analysed and a report is issued based on the outcomes. Thus, psychological testing can be described as the process of administering a psychological test and is usually done by a qualified psychologist (Wright, 2010).
Psychological tests are grouped into five major categories. These categories include: Neuropsychological evaluations, Intelligence assessments, Personality tests, Attitude tests and Achievement tests. There are various tests that are carried out under each category in order to come up with a diagnosis.
Neuropsychological evaluations are psychological tests that are carried out by a doctor to determine problems in the brain or the central nervous system. The tests are used by psychologists to detect problems in reasoning, cognisance, concentration or memory (Franzen, 2000). Additionally, Neuropsychological tests are also used in diagnosis of brain damage or diseases of the nervous system such as stroke or epilepsy.
Intelligence assessments on the other hand are used to measure an individual’s thinking ability, comprehension and understanding (Wright, 2010). Tests are administered to an individual and then graded according to a certain standard. Fundamentally, the most common is the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests, which are administered by a trained evaluator.
Personality tests measure an individual’s character traits. The mode of administering a personality test is mainly through questionnaires that follow different logical designs. One common use of personality tests is in counselling which helps to understand individual behavioural patterns. In addition, personality tests are also conducted in job interviews. In that case, they are used by the potential employer to discover the personality of a potential employee.
Attitude tests are used to gauge feelings and reactions of an individual. They tell how a person feels about certain situations, events, things or people. The most common attitude test is the Likert Scale. It measures attitude responses in five stages from the most negative to the most positive. For example to measure like or dislike, the Likert scale would structure the responses as: “strongly dislike”, “dislike”, “neither dislike nor like” and “strongly like”. The major use of attitude tests is in research and surveys.
Achievement tests are used to measure the understanding and knowledge of certain educational topics. Subsequently, achievement tests can also be used to measure the skills set of an individual. A common example of this kind is the aptitude tests which are also known as psychometric tests. These aptitude tests are used especially in various job interviews to measure individual abilities.
Furthermore, for a psychological test to be considered as a stable test, it has to satisfy the concept of reliability (Franzen, 2000). As a result, reliability is achieved if a psychological test can produce the same results when administered more than once. There are two main types of reliability when it comes to psychological testing. First is the test-retest reliability where a test that is administered twice or more times on the same individual should produce the same result. In the other case of inter-rater, reliability is achieved when different observers or psychologists would come up with the same answer if they all examined a particular individual.
However, reliability alone is not sufficient, and that is where the concept of validity of a psychological test is utilised. The two main concepts used in validity are construct validity and predictive validity (Franzen, 2000). Under construct validity, a psychological test should not measure other variables that were not intended to be measured (Franzen, 2000). In terms of predictive validity, the variable used should be able to correlate to different criteria of interest in order to make future predictions. Thus, validity and reliability work hand in hand to ensure that a psychological test can be relied upon.

References

Franzen, D. M. (2000). Reliability and Validity in Neuropsychological Assessment. Berlin:
Springer Science & Business Media.
Wright, J. A. (2010). Conducting Psychological Assessment: A Guide for Practitioners.
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.