A Privacy Issue
When browsing the internet to come up with a topic for this psychological tests blog, I stumbled upon a very controversial article by the Daily Mail discussing “Orwellian” psychological tests. The term “Orwellian” originates from George Orwell. His book Nineteen Eighty-Four discusses a dystopian future where there is some sort of government that is watching over your every move. Citizens have no privacy because they are always under surveillance. So the word “Orwellian” is describing this totalitarian society. They use this strong word to describe this new psychological test because the test is conducted on schoolchildren, asking them very personal questions, and keeping these answers stored in a government database. The questions revolve around the topic debating whether or not the children’s parents nurture them enough. Apparently the answers will be viewed and children who have questionable answers/scores will be further investigated.
I find this kind of testing to be very wrong. Although some may argue that it can help children who are living under bad circumstances who need assistance, it is an invasion of privacy to the students and the families to ask schoolchildren these kinds of personal questions. There is also the concern of validity. What stops a child from acting out and jokingly answer a question such as: “Do your parents make you feel special?” If a child decides it would be funny to put “no” and government officials who are in charge of analyzing these responses take that seriously there could be a big ordeal where there shouldn’t be. Also, on the topic of validity, they have asked a social work expert to look at the kinds of questions they will be asking. She replied saying that although some of the questions are useful, “others were subjective, potentially wrong or even based on prejudice.” This shows just how unreliable these tests are. If the questions they are asking do not even pass the validity test, then how can this measure the nurturing construct that they’re aiming for?
Another chilling aspect of this test is that “Named Persons will be entitled to demand information and share it with police and social workers without parents’ consent or knowledge.” How is it appropriate not to get the consent of parents? It doesn’t seem right for children to be able to give all their rights and information to the government at such a young age. The issue that the children might not even know what they’re signing up for is also a big issue.
Also, one huge concern about this psychological test is the issue of bias. The social expert, Maggie Mellon, reports that there are many, many, biases in terms of the reporting and questions. She says that the teacher and key worker are able to record very positive things about themselves but not the parents. This is due to the fact that when an issue comes up in the testing, the key worker is the one reporting on the environment of the children, also known as reporter bias. Mellon also says that there may be bias in terms of race, sexuality, and financial situation however “there is no warning of this in the guidance.”
This psychological test lacks reliability, validity, unbiased opinions, and is morally wrong which is why it the data should not be considered accurate, and the test stopped.
