Life and tests

Stop this train, I want to get off

Are we getting a little tired of hearing about Tests? Is it the complexity? Is there a message that this is HARD (or perhaps futile)? Perhaps it’s a little bit distasteful (“Testing….yuck!!”). Manipulative and deceptive? What are your motives for building this test, really?

And then there are the numbers…#boring. Variances and variability, distributions and rank orders, reliability and error, formulas, formulas, formulas…unfortunately, all necessary.

OK, let’s all take a breather. Let’s go out and not think about Tests at all for the rest of the day. Can you do it?

But seriously, relax. When in doubt, go back to the beginning. Adopt a beginner’s mind. Imagine you’ve never heard of tests (where you came from there was no such thing) and you are just learning about it now. What would be your first few questions?

At this precise point in time, how do you expect to feel when you think about Tests, read about them, work on creating one or analyzing your results and talking about what you’ve found? Broadly speaking, do you expect to experience positive or negative feelings? Does it sound like fun? Maybe not so much, but there is a satisfaction from creating something useful and interesting.

Again, we need to relax. Remember that you have always been doing testing all the time — when you evaluate yourself or others on any dimension, when you weigh the pros and cons while making a decision,…

So what we are learning about in PSYC 406 is how to formalize that process. We are modern man making tools (technology) to help us control our environment, which in this case means controlling ourselves and other people.