Psychological assessment test unambiguously gives a strong conclusion about the specific psychological construct a person has. For a proper administration of any psychological test, the whole sets of criteria and requirements for each test should be made adequately. A person who has insufficient knowledge about the field cannot properly administer such tests. You need a qualified professional for a successful administration of psychological tests. A person who can draw conclusions, and make a good diagnosis based on the results, are considered fit for the post.
The latter mostly assessescognitive domains ofpathological conditions such as the follows:
- Whether a person is suffering from pathological states of anxiety, stress, depression etc.
- The attitudes, behaviours and feelings of the individuals regarding the treatment they had received formally from their therapists, or are presently going through any kind of them.
- To know about some specific abilities, skills and knowledge of a person like memory, cognitive ability, problem solving skills and many more.
- If the person has traits of extraversion or introversion.
- To measure the intelligence,achievement,aptitude,interests etc. of an individual. Psychometric assessment tests along with psychological assessment test can only make some concrete conclusions about an individual’s pathological conditions.
Types And Examples Of Psychological Assessment Tests
Personality test is one kind of assessment test which is intended to measure the traits of human beings, and their individual personality style. Personality tests are mostly used in research purpose or for further assistance in clinical diagnosis. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), Rorschach inkblot test,and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory(MMPI)are few such examples.
Intelligence tests like Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale (SB), achievement tests like the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT), attitude tests like the Likert scale are some more examples.
However, the validity of the tests is always specific, for a particular purpose. Hence good testing equipment is valid for a definite purpose only. As for example a test which is valid for selecting a salesman, will be clearly invalid for selecting a scientist. An intelligence test may serve to be good for selecting a person who can become high ranking person in a college, but not for finding out a good mechanic or a salesman. When we are actually making physical measurements, validity does not pose a big problem.As you know that a yardstick measures length or a thermometer will eventually measure temperature,so when it comes to psychological characteristics it becomes increasingly difficult to establish the validity. One definite reason for this is mainly because psychological characteristics are not as simple as physical characteristics.Needless to say they are highly complex.
Reliability of the test is the degree to which people earn the same scores each time they are measured.If it is a matter of chance whether a subject does well or poorly on the test, we can be quite assured that the instrument is not reliable.A test cannot be valid unless it is first of all reliable.But the reliability itself cannot guarantee validity, that is, even if a test gives more or less the same results it does not mean that the test is measuring what it is intended to measure.