Practice Makes Perfect!
What are standardized admission tests really measuring?
Ever since the creation of the concept of psychological testing, the main focus was to ensure high validity as well as high reliability. Validity is the extent to which the measurement corresponds to what it claims to be measuring in the real world, while reliability is the overall consistency of a measure. Most of the standardized tests seem to be meeting these goals; however, due to the inherent nature of psychological testing, validity can often be compromised in certain types of tests.
Validity becomes increasingly important when dealing with tests whose outcomes have tangible consequences. Prime examples are standardized tests whose function is the classification and selection of people, especially in academic and work settings. We all have heard of admission tests such as the SAT, TOEFL, GMAT, MCAT…etc. What do all these tests have in common? Their results could have a major impact on your future career. They decide whether you will be joining one university over the other; and subsequently decide whether you will be offered one job opportunity over the other. Therefore, the validity of these types of tests become increasingly crucial.
Idealistically speaking, these tests aim to measure students’ aptitudes such as their level of literacy skills, verbal comprehension, critical analysis etc. If that is indeed the case, we would expect that a student who is very well praised for his excellent analysis and critical skills to obtain an almost perfect score on a test aiming to measure these skills, while a student known to be relatively lacking in those skills to not do so well. However, this pattern is not always seen. In fact, the complete opposite outcome often occurs. The tests clearly seem to be measuring a feature other than the respective skill…What could it be? Level of practice!
Although these standardized tests were initially created with the purpose of measuring students’ aptitudes, they have become a measure of practice. Nowadays, doing well on such an exam, necessitates countless hours of taking practice tests, attending tutorials, and booking customized classes; rather than being naturally good at a skill. Through practice, students become better trained at recognizing the different types of questions that arise in the standardized tests and identifying their corresponding answers. Therefore, it seems to be the case that the standardized test tests the student’s ability to take the test, rather than the student’s ability in a certain skill. In fact these standardized tests lack so much in validity to the extent that research has shown that they are not predictors of future academic success!
That being said, are psychological tests good measures of aptitude when it comes to academic and job admissions? I would argue otherwise.
In my opinion, these tests must be removed from the standard process of application, and instead the focus must be on other means of assessment such as interviews and behavioral observations. However, if they remain an integral part of admission, standardized aptitude admission tests must be regularly updated and revised in order to avoid having the factor of practice meddle with the tests’ validity.
