Women University Bagh Azad Kashmir

Assignment no 2

Subject Psychological Testing

Topic Tests and Educational Decisions

Department Education

Submitted to Ma’am Misbah

Submitted by Misbah Iqbal

Class MA 3rd

Submission date 16/03/2021

Tests and Educational Decisions
Tests are designed for different purposes, for example, to inform decisions
impacting accountability; admissions, employment, graduation, licensing, and
placement. Test results can also impact decisions regarding treatment in mental
health and counseling settings, interventions in special education, and policy and
legal issues.

Definition
Tests are written, visual, or verbal evaluations administered to assess the
cognitive and emotional functioning of children and adults.

Types of Tests:-
Cognitive
Cognitive testing refers to testing where the construct of interest is a cognitive
ability. Cognition includes mental processes related to knowledge,
comprehension, language acquisition and production, memory, reasoning,
problem solving, and decision making. Intelligence tests, achievement tests, and
aptitude tests are all considered cognitive tests because they assess constructs
involving cognitive abilities and processing. Other examples of cognitive tests
include educational admissions tests and licensure and certification tests.

Affective
In affective testing, the construct of interest relates to psychological attributes not
involving mental processing. Affective constructs include personality traits,
psychopathologies, interests, attitudes, and perceptions, as discussed below. Note
that cognitive measures are often used in both educational and psychological
settings. However, affective measures are more common in psychological settings.

Achievement
Achievement and aptitude describe two related forms of cognitive tests. Both
types of tests measure similar cognitive abilities and processes, but typically for
slightly different purposes. Achievement tests are intended to describe learning
and growth, for example, in order to identify how much content students have
mastered in a unit of study. Accountability tests required by NCLB are
achievement tests built on the educational curricula for states in the US. State
curricula are divided into what are called learning standards or curriculum
standards. These standards operationalize the curriculum in terms of what
proficient students should know or be able to do.

Aptitude
In contrast to achievement tests, aptitude tests are typically intended to measure
cognitive abilities that are predictive of future performance. This future
performance could be measured in terms of the same or a similar cognitive
ability, or in terms of performance on other constructs and in other situations. For
example, intelligence or IQ tests are used to identify individuals with
developmental and learning disabilities and to predict job performance (e.g.,
Carter 2002). The Stanford Binet Intelligence Scales, originally developed in the
early 1900s, were the first standardized aptitude tests. Others include the
Wechsler Scales and the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery.

Test types and features

Over the past hundred years numerous terms have been introduced to distinguish
different tests from one another based on certain features of the tests themselves
and what they are intended to measure. Educational tests have been described as
measuring constructs that are the focus of instruction and learning; whereas
psychological tests measure constructs that is not the focus of teaching and
learning. Thus, educational and psychological tests differ in the constructs they
measure. Related distinctions are made between cognitive and affective tests,
and achievement and aptitude tests. Other distinctions include summative versus
formative, mastery versus growth, and knowledge versus performance.
Educational decisions
Definition:-
Educational decision making refers to the process by which educators examine
assessment data to identify student strengths and deficiencies and apply those
findings to their practice.

Types of Decisions:-
Placement Decisions
“Decisions concerning the appropriate educational program for a student with a
disability, placement in gifted and talented programs, and access to language
services are examples of placement decisions. The joint standards state there
should be adequate evidence documenting the relationship among test scores,
appropriate instructional programs, and beneficial student outcomes.”

Promotion Decisions
“When a test given for promotion purposes is being used to certify mastery, it is
important that there be evidence that the test adequately covers only the content
and skills that students have actually had an opportunity to learn.”

Graduation Decisions
“When large-scale standardized tests are used in making graduation decisions,
there should evidence that the tests adequately cover only the content and skills
that students have had an opportunity to learn. “Definition of Psychological
Decisions
Psychological decisions examining individual decisions in the context of a set of
needs, preferences and values the individual has or seeks. Cognitive: the decision-
making process regarded as a continuous process integrated in the interaction
with the environment.
Psychological decisions
As an example of decision making in the context of psychology, we’ll look at one
of the most widely used standardized personality tests. In the 1930s and 1940s,
two researchers at the University of Minnesota pioneered an empirical and
theoretical method for developing personality and pathology scales. This method
involved administering hundreds of short items to patients with known diagnoses.
Items measuring specific personality traits and pathologies were identified based
on consistent patterns of response for patients with those traits and pathologies.
For example, patients diagnosed with depression responded in similar ways
across certain items. Regardless of the content of the items (hence the theoretical
nature of the method), if depressed individuals responded in consistent ways, the
items were assumed to measure depression.

Finding test information

Information for commercially available tests can usually be found by searching
online, with test publishers sharing summaries and technical documentation for
their tests. Repositories of test information are also available online. ETS provides
a searchable data base of over 25,000 tests at www.ets.org/test_link. A search for
the term “creativity” returns 213 records, including the Adult Playfulness Scale, “a
personality measure which assesses the degree to which an individual tends to
define an activity in an imaginative, nonserious or metaphoric manner so as to
enhance intrinsic enjoyment, involvement, and satisfaction.