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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Psychological methodology > Psychological testing & measurement
*Accessible reference and text on a critical topic--testing pervades society, yet students find its core concepts challenging. *Class tested at two universities; the emphasis on conceptual understanding and application promotes critical thinking. *Flexible organization enables researchers and students to review the basics or delve into advanced concepts as needed. *Competing titles are pricey, dated, and not as reader friendly. *Examples and discussions walk readers through critical decisions in the selection, administration, scoring, interpretation, and development of measurement instruments.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious and sometimes debilitating mental disorder. Yet only about one in ten people who are exposed to significant traumatic events develop PTSD. Since its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1980, the definition of PTSD has been controversial. Various changes made to the criteria have gradually widened the diagnostic criteria, which now include experiences that may not involve direct exposure to trauma, which in turn has led to PTSD to be over-diagnosed: clinicians may be tempted to seize on traumatic events in a history as an explanation of mental disorders, while patients may automatically receive the diagnosis if they experienced major trauma in the past. Myths of Trauma is a timely and important book that probes the sensitive, emotional, and often controversial subject of trauma, the difficulties associated with its diagnosis, and the over-diagnosis of PTSD. Trauma has become a catch-all for many kinds of adverse experiences, when in reality, people are significantly resilient to traumatic events. The book also explores how responses to trauma develop in the context of multiple interwoven risk factors, ranging from genetic vulnerability effecting sensitivity to the environment, as well as past adversities; how trauma has become a political issue that interferes with unbiased scientific study of its effects; and how trauma narratives can have a darker side when patients use them to justify feelings of victimhood that interfere with their own agency. Integrating and analysing the vast quantities of scientific literature on the topic, Myths of Trauma teaches us not to think about trauma in isolation or as one thing rather than many different things. The experiences of trauma deserve a place in clinical practice, and it is time for PTSD to be viewed through a more complex and multidimensional lens within the broader biopsychosocial context.
The field of intelligence testing has been revolutionized by Alan S. Kaufman. He developed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Revised (WISC-R) with David Wechsler, and his best-selling book, Intelligent Testing with the WISC-R, introduced the phrase intelligent testing. Kaufman, with his wife, Nadeen, then created his own series of tests: the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (K-TEA), the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT), and many others. The K-ABC, the first major intelligence test to challenge the Wechsler, helped raise the bar for future tests. This book is a celebration of his life s work, with contributions by a who s who in IQ testing, including Bruce Bracken, Dawn Flanagan, Elaine Fletcher-Janzen, Randy Kamphaus, Nancy Mather, Steve McCallum, Jack Naglieri, Tom Oakland, Cecil Reynolds, and Robert Sternberg. The book, edited by his son James, features essays expanding on his work and ideas from former students and colleagues.
This proceedings volume highlights the latest research and developments in psychometrics and statistics. It represents selected and peer-reviewed presentations given at the 85th Annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), held virtually on July 13-17, 2020. The IMPS is one of the largest international meetings on quantitative measurement in education, psychology and the social sciences. It draws approximately 500 participants from around the world, featuring paper and poster presentations, symposiums, workshops, keynotes, and invited presentations. Leading experts and promising young researchers have written the included chapters. The chapters address a wide variety of topics including but not limited to item response theory, adaptive testing, Bayesian estimation, propensity scores, and cognitive diagnostic models. This volume is the 9th in a series of recent works to cover research presented at the IMPS.
This book explains the psychological assessment process and reviews the origins of psychological testing, referral and testing processes, and prominent psychological assessment instruments. Most important, this book details how to evaluate testing data and use them to understand an individual's needs and to inform interventions and treatments. This book addresses specific domains of psychological assessment, including: * Intelligence and academic achievement. * Speech-language and visual-motor abilities. * Memory, attention/concentration, and executive functioning. * Behavioral and social-emotional functioning. * Developmental status. Practical Guide to Child and Adolescent Psychological Testing is an essential resource for clinicians, primary care providers, and other practitioners as well as researchers, professors, and graduate students in the fields of child, school, and developmental psychology, pediatrics and social work, child and adolescent psychiatry, primary care medicine, and related disciplines.
This book proposes and explores the idea that the forced union of the aleatory and epistemic aspects of probability is a sterile hybrid, inspired and nourished for 300 years by a false hope of formalizing inductive reasoning, making uncertainty the object of precise calculation. Because this is not really a possible goal, statistical inference is not, cannot be, doing for us today what we imagine it is doing for us. It is for these reasons that statistical inference can be characterized as a myth. The book is aimed primarily at social scientists, for whom statistics and statistical inference are a common concern and frustration. Because the historical development given here is not merely anecdotal, but makes clear the guiding ideas and ambitions that motivated the formulation of particular methods, this book offers an understanding of statistical inference which has not hitherto been available. It will also serve as a supplement to the standard statistics texts. Finally, general readers will find here an interesting study with implications far beyond statistics. The development of statistical inference, to its present position of prominence in the social sciences, epitomizes a number of trends in Western intellectual history of the last three centuries, and the 11th chapter, considering the function of statistical inference in light of our needs for structure, rules, authority, and consensus in general, develops some provocative parallels, especially between epistemology and politics.
This book is an introductory text to the field of psychological testing primarily suitable for undergraduate students in psychology, education, business, and related fields. This book will also be of interest to graduate students who have not had a prior exposure to psychological testing and to professionals such as lawyers who need to consult a useful source. Psychological Testing is clearly written, well-organized, comprehensive, and replete with illustrative materials. In addition to the basic topics, the text covers in detail topics that are often neglected by other texts such as cross-cultural testing, the issue of faking tests, the impact of computers and the use of tests to assess positive behaviors such as creativity.
A comprehensive collection of new work examining the relationship between educational measurement concepts and the assessment of student learning in classrooms. Adapts existing concepts in measurement and information theory to fit the specific context of classroom learning and assessment. Serves as a companion volume to the work and goals of the NCME's Classroom Assessment Task Force, which is working to advance classroom assessment research within the field of educational measurement.
This book provides an up-to-date review of commonly undertaken methodological and statistical practices that are based partially in sound scientific rationale and partially in unfounded lore. Some examples of these methodological urban legends are characterized by manuscript critiques such as: (a) your self-report measures suffer from common method bias; (b) your item-to-subject ratios are too low; (c) you can t generalize these findings to the real world; or (d) your effect sizes are too low. What do these critiques mean, and what is their historical basis? More Statistical and Methodological Myths and Urban Legends catalogs several of these quirky practices and outlines proper research techniques. Topics covered include sample size requirements, missing data bias in correlation matrices, negative wording in survey research, and much more."
This volume addresses an important problem in social scientific research on global religions and spirituality: How to evaluate the role of diverse religious and spiritual (R/S) beliefs and practices within the rapid evolution of spiritual globalization and diversification trends. The book examines this question by bringing together a panel of international scholars including psychologists, sociologists, and researchers in religious studies, public health, medicine, and social work. The content includes chapters describing innovative concepts of post-Christian spirituality, Eastern forms of meditation, afterlife beliefs associated with the three dominant cultural legacies, various non-religious worldviews, spiritual Jihad, and secular and religious reverence. The book also covers such important themes as spiritual well-being, faith, struggle, meaning making, modeling, and support, as well as mysticism and using prayer to cope with existential crises. This book advances the understanding of the role of R/S across different faiths and cultural systems, including both Western and non-Western ones, and enriches the mainstream of psychological sciences and practices. It appeals to students, educators, researchers, and clinicians in multiple related fields and disciplines.
This book offers a practical approach to fostering self-efficacy and improving understanding of others' behavior. The authors introduce the ID37 instrument as a psychological model and assessment procedure for analyzing personalities and motivations, showing how exploring one's own personality can lead to more effective self-direction, greater satisfaction with life, and more profound success. By combining aspects of motivational psychology with practical diagnostics application, the book aims to demonstrate the practical benefits of motivation analysis on understanding identity formation and development. Among the topics addressed: Personality traits and states Motivation-driven action The 16 motives and their impact Obstacles to achieving satisfaction Case studies from business coaching, leadership, and HR management scenarios * Including the basics on motivational psychology as well as a variety of case studies and practical tips for day-to-day work, The ID37 Personality Analysis is a useful reference for students and researchers interested in personality development as well as HR managers and leaders looking to deepen their knowledge of motivational psychology.
This Handbook provides a contemporary and research-informed review of the topics essential to clinical psychological assessment and diagnosis. It outlines assessment issues that cross all methods, settings, and disorders, including (but not limited to) psychometric issues, diversity factors, ethical dilemmas, validity of patient presentation, psychological assessment in treatment, and report writing. These themes run throughout the volume as leading researchers summarize the empirical findings and technological advances in their area. With each chapter written by major experts in their respective fields, the text gives interpretive and practical guidance for using psychological measures for assessment and diagnosis.
*Invaluable school practitioner resource, revised and updated: 25% new material includes telehealth applications, cyberbullying updates, and more. *Expanded coverage of adolescent issues, such as antisocial behavior, substance use, social media, sexual orientation, and gender identity. *Practice-oriented work gives psychologists, counselors, social workers, and educators ready-to-use, downloadable tools. *Authoritative, research-based information.
Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently administer, score, and interpret the KABC-II Now designed for children aged three to eighteen, the KABC-II is among the top tier of children's tests of cognitive ability. Alan and Nadeen Kaufman, authors of the KABC-II, joined forces with Elizabeth Lichtenberger and Elaine Fletcher-Janzen to produce Essentials of KABC-II Assessment. The best source of information on the new edition of the K-ABC, Essentials of KABC-II Assessment provides students and practitioners with an unparalleled resource for learning and application, including expert assessment of the test's relative strengths and weaknesses, valuable advice on its clinical applications, and illuminating case reports. Like all the volumes in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, this book is designed to help busy mental health professionals quickly acquire the knowledge and skills they need to make optimal use of a major psychological assessment instrument. Each concise chapter features numerous callout boxes highlighting key concepts, bulleted points, and extensive illustrative material, as well as test questions that help you gauge and reinforce your grasp of the information covered.
This book aims to address the challenges of defining measurement in social sciences, presenting a conceptualization of the practice of measurement from the perspective of the pragmatic tradition in philosophy. The book reviews key questions regarding the scope and limits of measurement, emphasizing that if the trust that the public places on mea sures in the social sciences relies on their connection to the notion of measurement in the physical sciences, then the clarification of the similarities and differences between measurement in the physical and the social realms is of central importance to adequately contextualize their relative advantages and limitations. It goes on to present some of the most influential theories of measurement such as the "classical view" of measurement, operationalism, and the representational theory of measurement, as well as more methodological perspectives arising from the practice of researchers in the social sciences, such as the latent variable perspective, and from the physical sciences and engineering, represented by metrology. This overview illustrates that the concept of measurement, and that of quantitative methods, is currently being used across the board in ways that do not necessarily conform to traditional, classical definitions of measurement, pushing the boundaries of what constitutes our technical understanding of it. Moreover, what constitutes a technical understanding of measurement, and the theoretical commitments that it entails, must vary in different areas. In this context, disagreement on what is constitutive of measurement is bound to appear. Pragmatism is presented as a theoretical perspective that offers the advantage of being flexible and fallibilist, encouraging us to abandon the pursuit of a timeless and perfect definition that attempts to establish decontextualized/definitive demarcation criteria for what is truly measurement. This book will be of particular interest for psychologists and other human and social scientists, and more concretely for scholars interested in measurement and assessment in psychological and social measurement. The pragmatic perspective of measurement presents a conceptual framework for researchers to ground their assessment practices acknowledging and dealing with the challenges of social measurement.
There are several tests used in clinical practice and research worldwide that have been devised to assess the functions subsumed by the frontal lobes of the brain. Anatomical localisation has revealed that the frontal lobes can be divided into sub-regions with different functional domains. As a result, a number of authors working in the frontal lobe literature have made a case for patients with frontal lobe damage to be considered in their distinct subgroups, rather than considered together in one unitary group. As a result, it is important for clinicians and researchers to be made aware of the functions assessed by individual frontal tests and understand which frontal regions might be impaired in their patient groups, as patients with damage to one of these regions will perform poorly on tasks tapping that region yet may perform well on tasks tapping the unaffected regions within the frontal lobes. The 'Handbook of Frontal Lobe Assessment' provides a critical review and appraisal of both the neuropsychological and experimental tests that have been devised to assess frontal lobe functions. It includes many tests that have not been included in previously published neuropsychological compendia. Throughout, the book discusses the available frontal tests in relation to patient and lesion data, neuroimaging data and aging data in order to offer clinicians and researchers the opportunity to choose the best assessment instrument for their purpose.
This book offers mental health clinicians a comprehensive guide to assessing and managing suicide risk. Suicide has now come to be understood as a multidimensionally determined outcome, which stems from the complex interaction of biological, genetic, psychological, sociological and environmental factors. Based on recent evidence and an extensive literature review, the book provides straightforward, essential information that can easily be applied in a wide variety of disciplines.
This book focuses on the latest developments in behaviormetrics and data science, covering a wide range of topics in data analysis and related areas of data science, including analysis of complex data, analysis of qualitative data, methods for high-dimensional data, dimensionality reduction, visualization of such data, multivariate statistical methods, analysis of asymmetric relational data, and various applications to real data. In addition to theoretical and methodological results, it also shows how to apply the proposed methods to a variety of problems, for example in consumer behavior, decision making, marketing data, and social network structures. Moreover, it discuses methodological aspects and applications in a wide range of areas, such as behaviormetrics; behavioral science; psychology; and marketing, management and social sciences. Combining methodological advances with real-world applications collected from a variety of research fields, the book is a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners, as well as for applied statisticians and data analysts.
This book critically examines the historical and philosophical foundations of construct validity theory (CVT), and how these have and continue to inform and constrain the conceptualization of validity and its application in research. CVT has had an immense impact on how researchers in the behavioural sciences conceptualize and approach their subject matter. Yet, there is equivocation regarding the foundations of the CVT framework as well as ambiguities concerning the nature of the "constructs" that are its raison d'etre. The book is organized in terms of three major parts that speak, respectively, to the historical, philosophical, and pragmatic dimensions of CVT. The primary objective is to provide researchers and students with a critical lens through which a deeper understanding may be gained of both the utility and limitations of CVT and the validation practices to which it has given rise.
This book focuses on the use of the Rasch measurement model in validation studies and in analyzing the psychometric properties of a variety of test instruments, questionnaires, and scales in international contexts. It broadly examines the development and application of Rasch modeling, providing in-depth analyses of the properties of various scales used in the fields of education, and humanities and social sciences research. The book includes exemplary works on educational research and practices that highlight recent and innovative applications, as well as theoretical and practical aspects of Rasch modeling. Readers will find it helpful to understand the latest approaches to Rasch measurement in educational research, as well as practices for future studies and quantitative research. 'This book provides a diverse set of perspectives on Rasch models from scholars across the globe. The volume is both theoretical and applied. The first section of the book provides an overview of Rasch modeling and explains the theoretical and conceptual framework underlying the Rasch model. The remainder of the book highlights multiple applications of the Rasch model within educational assessment as well as several examples of how Rasch modeling can be used for validation studies. This volume showcases the wide variety of ways in which Rasch modeling can be applied to assessment data to provide insights into students' achievement and learning and to improve instruction.'-Betsy McCoach, University of Connecticut, USA. 'A well-written collection of articles. Grouped by the theoretical and applied aspects of Rasch measurement, each chapter in this edited volume makes notable contributions to knowledge and practice. Written by leading scholars in the field, these chapters were written in a clear, succinct, and assertive manner, providing readers with up-to-date information, analyses, and debates. This book should be found in the core collection of emerging researchers and established scholars in educational measurement.'-Timothy Teo, Murdoch University, Australia.
This new edition surveys the full range of available structural equation modeling (SEM) methodologies. The book has been updated throughout to reflect the arrival of new software packages, which have made analysis much easier than in the past. Applications in a broad range of disciplines are discussed, particularly in the social sciences where many key concepts are not directly observable. This book presents SEM's development in its proper historical context-essential to understanding the application, strengths and weaknesses of each particular method. This book also surveys the emerging path and network approaches that complement and enhance SEM, and that are growing in importance. SEM's ability to accommodate unobservable theory constructs through latent variables is of significant importance to social scientists. Latent variable theory and application are comprehensively explained and methods are presented for extending their power, including guidelines for data preparation, sample size calculation and the special treatment of Likert scale data. Tables of software, methodologies and fit statistics provide a concise reference for any research program, helping assure that its conclusions are defensible and publishable.
This book is a strenuous critique of the misinterpretation of statistical knowledge of populations in mainstream psychology, exploring the implications of assuming that those statistics constitute scientific knowledge of individuals. It investigates the essential nature and historical roots of this interpretive practice, and documents the lack of change in mainstream thinking despite previous critiques of the practice. The author contends that prevailing interpretive traditions result in bad science, in that invalid claims are made to knowledge of individuals. He also discusses the socio-ethical problems resulting from this misinterpretation of statistics, where psychological practitioners unjustifiably endorse interventions in the lives of individuals. Lamiell urges psychologists to abandon the aggregate statistical methods which he argues have transformed the field into 'psycho-demography,' and to embrace instead alternative research methods that are logically suited to gaining scientific knowledge about the psychological functioning of individuals. This book concludes by highlighting some of the currently available methodological alternatives, as well as discussing some enduring conceptual impediments to the serious consideration of those alternatives.
This open access book presents a large number of innovations in the world of operational testing. It brings together different but related areas and provides insight in their possibilities, their advantages and drawbacks. The book not only addresses improvements in the quality of educational measurement, innovations in (inter)national large scale assessments, but also several advances in psychometrics and improvements in computerized adaptive testing, and it also offers examples on the impact of new technology in assessment. Due to its nature, the book will appeal to a broad audience within the educational measurement community. It contributes to both theoretical knowledge and also pays attention to practical implementation of innovations in testing technology.
This book applies Rasch measurement theory to the fields of education, psychology, sociology, marketing and health outcomes in order to measure various social constructs. The chief focus is on first principles of both the theory and its applications. Because software is readily available to carry out analyses of real data, numerous small examples are provided in the book. The software used in these examples, and which is helpful in working through the text, is RUMM2030 (Rasch unidimensional models for measurement). The book's main goals are to equip researchers with the confidence they need in order to be in control of the analysis and interpretation of data, and to make professional rather than primarily statistical decisions mechanically. Because statistical principles are necessarily involved, reviews of the requisite statistics are provided in the Appendix. The content is based on courses that have been taught both online and in intensive form for over two decades. Although first principles are emphasised, much of the book is based on research conducted by the two authors and their colleagues.
This book focuses on quantitative survey methodology, data collection and cleaning methods. Providing starting tools for using and analyzing a file once a survey has been conducted, it addresses fields as diverse as advanced weighting, editing, and imputation, which are not well-covered in corresponding survey books. Moreover, it presents numerous empirical examples from the author's extensive research experience, particularly real data sets from multinational surveys. |
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