But why?
Some practical applications of psychological tests
And so begins my final blog of the year…
Before we get started, I’d like to quickly thank Dr. Stotland for forcing his (what I believed to be, anyway) slightly unconventional assessment methods upon us. After learning that we would be required to maintain not only a blog, but also to operationalize, measure, and report on a psychological construct of our choosing, I came very close to dropping the class outright. The short of it is that I’m glad I didn't. Having just finished the first draft of my final report, I’m surprised at how much we've learned about psychological testing in such a short period of time. So thank you Dr. Stotland.
I’d also like to take a second to acknowledge our TA, Kristin, who (from what I can tell) single-handedly organized the bulk of our test development project, and whose personalized comments have become a welcome (and refreshing) source of feedback. So a big thank you to Kristin for her efforts throughout the semester, and good luck with our final reports!
Onward we march…
The topics we’ve covered to date range from the assumptions underlying psychological assessments to the general guidelines for developing test items to the forensic applications of psychological tests and more. In this fourth and final blog, however, I’d like to focus on some of the major applications of psychological testing as a way of bidding adieu to this part of the course.
And without further ado…
Diagnosis: Psychologists will often rely on a variety of assessment procedures to help gain a deeper understanding of a client’s history, identify current levels of functioning, and document the presence of clinical symptoms. It’s common for these diagnostic measures to include clinical interviews and formal tests so that the information gained can be used to establish individualized treatment needs for the patient.
Instructional Planning: Assessment information is commonly used by educators to customize instruction so as to take into account the strengths and weaknesses of individual students. Thus in educational settings, information provided by psychological tests can aid in the development of curriculums that account for the skills and abilities of each and every student.
Placement & Selection: Scores on tests such as the ACT and SAT are typically used by universities as acceptance criteria that help determine which students will be offered admission. Further, students in a school may be assigned to different instructional programs based on their performance on tests and other assessments, psychological and otherwise.
Treatment Management: Oftentimes, the clinician making a diagnosis has to customize the treatment for the individual client. For example, not all patients with anxiety disorders will present with the same pattern of clinical symptoms, and thus ongoing assessment can be used to monitor the effectiveness of treatment and indicate if modifications are needed.
These, of course, are only an extremely small sampling of the content domain that is the applications of psychological tests. Off of the top of my head alone, for example, I can think of at least a handful more: we have measures designed to classify people into groups, to help clients better understand themselves, to provide users with feedback based on performance, to evaluate the effectiveness of a service or program, to aid in the collection of empirical data for the purpose of testing hypotheses, and on, and on, and on.
Thus to wrap up, psychological assessments are clearly capable of providing psychologists, clinicians, and educators alike with valuable information that can be used to help make better professional decisions. When used properly, this information can benefit individuals and in so doing increase overall well-being within society as a whole!
Good luck to everyone on the final exam!
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PS Kristin, I’m very much aware that I started two sentences with “and.” And I know how much you hate that (see feedback from Blog 1). And I apologize. Please don’t hurt me.
References:
Reynolds, Cecil R., and Ronald B. Livingstone. Mastering Modern Psychological Testing: Theory & Methods (2013).
