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Assessing Intelligence. http://www.raleighcharterhs.org/faculty/akoch/classpage/resources.asp#9. Test Construction. Standardization – defining the meaning of scores by comparing to a pretested “standard group”.
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Assessing Intelligence http://www.raleighcharterhs.org/faculty/akoch/classpage/resources.asp#9
Test Construction • Standardization – defining the meaning of scores by comparing to a pretested “standard group”. • Reliability – a measure of how consistent the test is. A test is reliable if people get similar scores on retest. How reliable is the SAT? • test-retest, parallel forms, split test • Validity– a measure of how well the test measures or predicts what it was designed for.
Types of validity • Content validity – does it test the accepted content? How well do my tests reflect how much psychology you learned? • Predictive validity -- does the test predict what it is supposed to? (How well does the SAT predict success in college?) • Construct validity - how well does it operationalize the concept (or construct) it purports to measure? Do intelligence tests really measure the quality that is generally considered “intelligence”?
Aptitude vs. Achievement Tests • Aptitude tests are designed to predict future performance. • Achievement tests are designed to measure current knowledge. What kind of validity is relevant to each?
WAIS (Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale) • most widely used intelligence test • gives separate verbal and performance scores • used to identify learning disabilities • A learning disability is possible if either: - a child scores much higher on one section that the other - a child has a much higher aptitude score than achievement score. • WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) – modified version of WAIS for children
Most standardized tests result in a normal distribution (bell-shaped). In a normally distributed population, 68% of people fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean, 95% of people fall within 2 standard deviations of the mean, and 99.7% of people fall within 3 standard deviations of the mean. Reminder: The standard deviation is the square root of the variance.
Spiffylicious Test Imagine a test of coolness… • What types of questions or tasks might it include? • How would it be standardized? • How would you check the reliability of the test? • How would you check the validity of the test? • What problems or limitations might the test have?
Review: • In chemistry, you learned the terms “accuracy” and “precision”. Here is a reminder if you’ve forgotten the difference: Accuracy is the degree of which a given measurement agrees with the standard value for that measurement. Precision is a measure of how well experimental values agree with each other. Which of these terms is analogous to reliability? Validity? • What is the difference between content validity and predictive validity? • What is the difference between an achievement test and an aptitude test? • What does it mean for a test to be “empirically derived”?
More… • What is the WAIS? What are the two subtests? • What percent of people fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean on an intelligence test? Within 2 standard deviations? • If the standard deviation of a sample is 4, what is the variance? • Name two test indicators that a learning disability may be present. • Which type of test – aptitude or achievement – would you expect to have high predictive validity.