PSY 130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Standardized Test, Psych
Spring Semester
2018
Psych 130
Psychology
Personality Development and Effective Behavior
● Assessment of personality:
o Our society is often obsessed with assessing personality
o Popular magazines also recommend brief assessments, or "quizzes," to determine
how good a roommate you are, what kind of romantic partner you need, or the
kind of holiday spot that fits your personality
o Although the magazines never say that their tests are based on any scientific
study, the success of such tests indicates that readers at least find them interesting,
if not plausible
o There's something about measuring a score that gives an untested 10-item quiz its
credibility
o On a more complex level personality psychologists were often accused of putting
too much confidence in the numbers produced by their personality tests at times
o Assessment of personality is a key aspect of a lot of personality studies
o If we want to research motivation for success, self-esteem, social anxiety, etc,
then we need to test these principles as accurately as possible
o Likewise, psychologists working in education, human resources, and counseling
also rely on personality tests to decide if a child should be put in a special class,
whether an employee should be promoted to a new job, or if a client should be
admitted to a psychiatric facility
o For any case it is the duty of the people who use the test to ensure that the
definition they are interested in is correctly measured
o Sadly, not all personality assessments are as successful as psychologists would
like, and improper use can be made even of the best results
o And how can we say a good test from a poor one, or decide whether we want to
quantify the test measures
o We need to look at its reliability and validity before using any standardized test
o Reliability:
▪ Suppose you've taken a personality test today and it showed you've been
high on the trait independence relative to someone your age
▪ In truth, more than most people, you enjoy being alone and making your
own choices
▪ Nonetheless, suppose you take the exam again next week, and this time
your score shows that you are fairly weak on freedom
▪ What of these scores reflect the true personality of you
▪ Sadly, from this study, you have no way to say whether you're an
independent individual or a dependent individual
▪ The lack of reliability is adequate for the test
▪ A check has high reliability when continuously calculated
▪ One indicator of the reliability of a test is how accurately the tests are
taken over time
