What does and does not constitute a

“good test”
Who, What and Why?
Who Are the Parties?
The test developer
The test user
The test taker
Society at large
What Types of Settings Are
Assessments Conducted in and Why?
Educational settings
Counseling settings
Clinical settings
Business settings
Other settings
Evaluating the Quality of Tests
 What is a “Good” Test?
 Reliability
 Validity
 Other settings

 Reference Sources for Test Information

 Test catalogues
 Test manuals
 Journal articles
 Online and CD-Rom databases
 Other sources
 Test User Qualifications:
APA Ethical Standards for Psychology
 Level A:
 Tests that can adequately be administered, scored, and
interpreted with the aid of the manual.
 Level B:
 Tests that require some technical knowledge of test
construction and use and of supporting psychological
and educational fields such as statistics, individual
differences, etc.
 Level C:
 Tests that require substantial understanding of testing
and supporting psychological fields, together with
supervised experience in the use of these devices.
Evaluating a test (Groth & Marnat, 2003)
Theoretical orientation
Practical considerations
Standardization: issue of norms
Reliability (.70/.90)
Validity
Clinical Judgments
Errors and overconfidence
Hypothesis testing
Increasing accuracy
Comprehensive
Write it down
Base rates
Seek feedback
What is a “Good” Test?
Reliability
 Consistency of the measuring tool

 The precision with which the test measures

and the extent to which error is present in
measurements

 Ex:
 weighing scale – gold
What is a “Good” Test?
Validity

 A test is considered valid for a particular purpose if

it does measure what it claims to measure
Questions regarding a test’s validity may focus on the
items that collectively make up the test
 Do the items adequately sample the range of areas that must be
sampled to adequately measure the construct?

 How do individual items contribute to or detract from the test’s

validity?

 What do these scores really tell us about the targeted construct?

 How are high scores on the test related to testrakers’ behavior?

 How do scores on this test relate to scores on other tests

purporting to measure the same construct?
What is a “Good” Test?
Other considerations
 Norms
 Scholarly literature
 behavior that is usual, average, normal, standard, expected,
or typical
 Psychometric context
 test performance data of a particular group of testtakers
that are designed for use as a reference when evaluating or
interpreting individual test scores
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What is a “Good” Test?
Other considerations
 Correlation
 An expression of the degree and direction of
correspondence between two things

 Coefficient of correlation (r) expresses a linear

relationship between two (and only two) variables usually
continuous in nature reflecting the degree of concomitant
variation between X and variable Y
 The numerical index that expresses this relationship
stating the extent to which X and Y are correlated
What is a “Good” Test?
Other considerations
 Inference from measurement
 Meta analysis
 refers to a family of techniques used to statistically combine
information across studies to produce single estimates of
the statistics being studied
 Culture and inference
 It is incumbent upon responsible test takers not to lose
sight of culture as a factor in test administration, scoring,
and interpretation