History, Basic Concepts

and Principles
WHY Study Psych Testing?

1. “TRADEMARK” of 2. Gives CREDIBILITY

a Psychologists
Basic Concepts

 Psychometrics
 measurement of mind’s dimensions
 Psychological Measurement
 computing/ scoring test results
 Psychological Tests
 a tool for psychological measurement
 Psychological Evaluation
 process of coming up with a judgment
 Psychological Assessment
 making sense/ interpreting numbers
 not always based on Psychological
Tests
A. Historical Orientation

Plato and Aristotle wrote about individual

differences 2,500 years ago. Dubois gave a
provocative account of the system of civil
service examination prevailing in the Chinese
empire as early as 2200 B.C. Such tests were
used to determine if Chinese officials were fitted
to perform their government status.
A. Historical Orientation

In ancient Greeks, testing was established as adjunct to

the educational process – to assess mastery of physical
and intellectual skills. Interest in individual differences
was almost non-existent in Europe during the Middle
Ages. European universities relied on formal
examination in awarding degrees and honors. The class
into which he was born dictates a person’s activities.
Little freedom was provided for personal expression
and development. It was only in the late 19th century
when scientific study of individual differences in mental
and personality actually began.
A. Historical Orientation
(Cont’d)

The history of psychological testing is an attracting event and has

abundant relevance to present-day practice. The origin of
psychological testing is focused largely on the efforts of European
psychologists to measure intelligence during the late 19th century
and pre-world War I era. Theses early intelligence tests and their
successors often exerted powerful effects upon the examinees that
took the tests (Gregory, 2000).

We are to examine the history and principles of psychological

testing, investigate the applications in specific fields such as
personality, intelligence, interest, and neuropsychology which may
reflect on the social and legal issues of testing.
Purposes and Uses of
Testing
Purposes and Uses of Testing
Traditionally, psychological tests measure
differences between individuals or reactions of
same individual on different occasions. These
tests and other assessment devices are
administered in a wide range of organizational
contexts in contemporary society, schools and
colleges, business and industry, psychological
clinics and counseling centers, government
and military organizations, research context of
various kind.
Purposes and Uses of Testing

Thus, personnel psychologists, school

psychologists, clinical counselors, counseling
psychologists, school psychologists, guidance
and marriage counselors and many other
applied and research-oriented specialists in
human behavior spend substantial portions of
their professional time in administering, scoring,
and interpreting psychological tests.
 The Uses of Tests
1. School Setting
a. classification of children for school instruction
b. diagnose of academic failure
c. educational and vocational counseling
d. admission of new students
e. discover learning disabilities of students
f. improve and enhance learning and instructional
process
g. understand individual differences
h. help judge an individual’s progress
i. enhance the effectiveness of counseling
j. enhance self-understanding and personal
development
 The Uses of Tests (Cont’d)

2. Industrial Setting
a. selection of qualified applicants
b. promotion of employees
c. training of employees
d. classifications/ transfer of employees
e. coaching/counseling
f. help management in planning a good training
program
g. help management in evaluating the effectiveness of
the performance appraisal program
The Uses of Tests (Cont’d)

3. Clinical Setting
a. detection of intellectual deficiencies
b. examination of emotionally disturbed individual
c. counseling for emotionally stability and effective
interpersonal relationship
d. marriage counseling
e. identify emotional disturbances, delinquency, and
other behavioral deviations
f. guide the psychologists in providing remedial
measures.
The Uses of Tests (Cont’d)

4. Research
a. identify psychological traits
b. determine the nature and extent of individual
differences
c. determine the strengths and weaknesses of certain
d. psychological testing program
e. help employees in the solution of a wide range of
organizational problems
Types of Psychological
Tests
 According to According to
Forms Administration

 Intelligence Test  Group Test

 Achievement Test  Individual Test
 Aptitude Test  Projective Test
 Personality Test
 Performance Test
According to Forms
Intelligence Test
 Intelligence tests are psychological test that are
designed to measure a variety of mental
functions, such as reasoning, comprehension, and
judgment.
 The goal of intelligence tests is to obtain an idea
of the person's intellectual potential.

NON-
VERBAL
VERBAL
Achievement Test

 “Past Learning”
 Designed to measure
academic ability
 Provide information on the
strengths and weaknesses
of students in specific
learning competencies
Aptitude Test

 “Future Learning”
 examination that attempts to
determine and measure a
person’s ability to acquire,
through future training, some
specific set of skills
(intellectual, motor, and so
on).
 The tests assume that people
differ in their special abilities
and that these differences
can be useful in predicting
future achievements.
Personality Test
 A test, usually involving a standardized series
of questions or tasks, used to describe or
evaluate a subject's personality
characteristics.
 Emotional, motivational, interpersonal,
attitudinal, and behavioral (E.M.I.A.B)
Performance Test
 a test requiring little or no use of
language, the test materials being
designed to elicit manual or behavioral res
ponses rather than verbal ones.
 the assessment of very different sets of
functional skills or abilities.
According to
Administration
Group Test

Group test is
MORE flexible.
Usually a close
ended
questions.
Individual Test

Usuallyan
open ended
questions
Has a wide
range of
answers.
Projective Test

 a type of personality test in

which the individual offers
responses to ambiguous
scenes, words or images.
 words, images, or
situations are presented to
a person.
 presumably revealing
hidden emotions and
internal conflicts projected
by the person into the test.
Additional Information…
Robert J. Gregory (2000) in his book, Psychological Testing, History, Principles,
and Applications, cited the following major landmarks in the History of
Psychological Testing

2200 B.C. Chinese begin civil service examination

1838 Jean Esquirol distingushes between mental
illness and mental retardation.
1862 Willhelm Wundt uses a calibrated pendulum to
measure the speed of thought.
1866 O. Edouard Segutin writes the first major
textbook on the assessment and treatment of
mental retardation.
1869 Wundt funds the first experimental laboratory in
psychology at Leipzig, Germany.
1884 Francis Galton administers the first test battery
to thousands of citizens at the International
Health Exhibit.
1890 James Mckeen Cattel uses the term mental test in
announcing the agenda for his Galtonian test battery.
1896 Emil Kraeplin provides the first comprehensive
classification of mental disorders.
1901 Clark Wissler discovers that Cattelian brass
instrument tests have no correlations with college
grades.
1904 Charles Spearman proposes that intelligence consists
of a single general factor g and numerous specific
factors S1, S2, S3, and so forth.
1904 Karl Pearson formulates the theory of correlation.
1905 Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon invent the first
modern inteliigence test.
1908 Henry H. Goddard translates the Binet-Simon scales
from French into English.
1912 Stern introduces the IQ or Intelligence Quotient: the
mental age divided by chronological age.
1916 Lewis Terman revises the Binet-Simon; revisions appear
in 1937, 1960, and 1986.
1917 Robert Yerkes spearheads the development of the Army
Alpha and Beta examinations used for testing WWI
recruits.
1918 Robert Woodworth develops the Personal Data Sheet,
the first personality test.
1920 Rorschach Test is published.
1921 Psychological Corporation, the first major test publisher,
was founded by Cattell, Thorndike, and Woodworth.
1926 The first Scholastic Aptitude Test is published by the
College Entrance Examination Board.
1927 The first edition of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank
is published.
1935 The Thematic Apperception Test is released by Morgan
and Murray at Harvard University.
1936 Linguist and others publish the precursor to the lowas
Test of basic skills.
1936 Edgar Doll publishes the Vineland Social Maturity Scale
for assessment of adoptive behavior in the mentally
retarded.
1938 L.L. Thurstone proposes the intelligence consists of
about seven group factors known as primary mental
abilities.
1938 Raven publishes the Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a
nonverbal test for reasoning intended to measure
Spearman’s g factor.
1938 Lauretta Bender publishes the Bender Visual Motor
Gestalt Test, a design-copying test of Visual Motor
Integration.
1938 Arnold Gesell releases his scale of infant development
1938 Oscar Buros publishes the first mental measurements
yearbook.
1939 The Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale is published;
Revisions are published in 1955 (WAIS), 1981 (WAIS-R),
1997 (WAIS-III)
1939 Taylor Russel tables are published for determining the
expected proportion of success with a test.
1939 The Kuder Preference Record, a forced choice interest
Inventory, is published.
1942 The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is
published.
1948 Office of the Strategic Service (OSS) uses situational
techniques for selection of Officers.
1949 The Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children is
published; revisions are published in 1974 (WISCR),
and 1991 (WISC-III)
1950 The Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank is
published.
1951 Lee Chronback introduces coefficient Alpha as an
index of reliability (internal consistency) for tests
and scales.
1952 American Psychiatric Association publishes the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual (DSM-1)
1953 Stephenson develops the Q-technique for studying the
self-concept and other variables.
1953 Paul Meehl publishes Clinical vs. Statistical
Prediction.
1956 The Halsteid Reitan Test Battery begins to emerge as the
premiere test battery in neuropsychology.
1957 C.E. Osgood describes the semantic differential.
1958 Lawrence Kohlberg publishes the first version of
his Moral Judgment Scale, research with it expands
until the mid-1980s
1959 Campbell and Fiske publish a test validation
approach known as the multitrait-multimethod
matrix.
1963 Raymond Cattell proposes the theory of fluid and
crystallized intelligence.
1967 In Hobson v. Hansen the rules against the use of
group ability tests to “track” students on the
ground that such tests discriminate against minority
children were imposed.
1968 Nancy Bayley publishes the Bayle Scales of Infant
Development (BSID). The revised version (BSIB-2) is
published in 1993.
1969 Arthur Jensen proposes the genetic hypothesis of
African-American versus White IQ differences in the
Harvard Educational Review.
1971 Griggs v. Duke Power, the Supreme Court rules that
employment test results must have a demonstrable
link to job performance.
1971 George Vaillant popularizes a hierarchy of 18 ego
adaptive mechanisms and describes a
methodology for their assessment.
1971 Court decision requires that tests used for personnel
selection must be job relevant (Griggs v. Duke Power).
1972 The Model Penal Code rule for legal insanity is
published and widely adopted in the United States.
1974 Rudolf Moos begins publications of the Social
Climate Scale to assess different environments.
1974 Friedman and Rosenman popularize the Typer A
coronary-prone behavior pattern; their assessment
is interrelated.
1975 The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 94-142, the
education for all Handicapped Children Act.
1978 Jane Mercer publishes SOMPA (System of Multi-
Cultural Pluralistic Assessment).
1978 In the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection
Adverse impact is defined by the four-fifth rule:
also Guidelines for employee selection studies are
published.
1979 In Larry P. v. Riles, the court rules that standardized
IQ tests are culturally biased against low-
functioning Black children.
1980 In Parents in Action on Special Education v. Hannon
the court that rules that standardized IQ tests are
not racially or culturally biased.
1985 The American Psychological Association and other
groups jointly publish the influential standards for
Educational Psychological
1985 Sparrow and others publish the Vineland Adaptive
Behavior Scales, a revision of pathbreaking 1936
Vineland Social Maturity Scale.
1987 American Psychiatric Association published DSM-
III-R.
1989 The “Lake Wobegon Effect” is noted: Virtually all
states of the union claim that their achievement
levels are above average.
1989 The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2
is published.
1992 American Psychological Association publishes a
revised Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code
of Conduct (American Psychologists, December,
1992)
1994 American Psychiatric Association publishes DSM-IV.
1994 Hernstein and Murray revive the race and IQ
heritability debate in the Bell Curve.
THE END!