Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE BASIC ISSUES
- PART TWO DIMENSIONS OF TESTING
- PART THREE APPLICATIONS OF TESTING
- PART FOUR THE SETTINGS
- PART FIVE CHALLENGES TO TESTING
- 16 The Issue of Faking
- 17 The Role of Computers
- 18 Testing Behavior and Environments
- 19 The History of Psychological Testing
- Appendix: Table to Translate Difficulty Level of a Test Item into a z Score
- References
- Test Index
- Index of Acronyms
- Subject Index
- References
18 - Testing Behavior and Environments
from PART FIVE - CHALLENGES TO TESTING
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE BASIC ISSUES
- PART TWO DIMENSIONS OF TESTING
- PART THREE APPLICATIONS OF TESTING
- PART FOUR THE SETTINGS
- PART FIVE CHALLENGES TO TESTING
- 16 The Issue of Faking
- 17 The Role of Computers
- 18 Testing Behavior and Environments
- 19 The History of Psychological Testing
- Appendix: Table to Translate Difficulty Level of a Test Item into a z Score
- References
- Test Index
- Index of Acronyms
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
AIM This chapter looks at a particular point of view called behavioral assessment and contrasts this with the more traditional point of view. We look at a variety of instruments developed or used in behavioral assessment to illustrate various issues. We then turn our focus to four broad areas of assessment that transcend the individual: program evaluation, the assessment of environments, the assessment of family functioning, and finally, some broad-based, flexible techniques.
TRADITIONAL ASSESSMENT
Much of traditional personality assessment and therefore testing is based upon psychodynamic theory, as found in Freud's writings, for example, and trait theory, as the work of Gordon Allport and of Raymond B. Cattell, for example. Both of these approaches view personality as the central aspect to understand, predict, or alter behavior. Both of these approaches assume that there are a number of dimensions called traits (or drives, needs, motives, etc.) that exist within the individual, are relatively stable, and give consistency to behavior – that is, knowing that a person is high on aggression allows us to predict with some accuracy that the individual will behave in certain ways across a number of situations. In both of these approaches, we infer that certain dimensions exist and that behavior is a “sign” of such underlying dimensions. Thus, the responses of a subject to the Beck Depression Inventory are seen as evidence that the subject is (or is not) depressed. The test performance is an indicator, a sign of the underlying hypothesized construct.
- Type
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- Information
- Psychological TestingAn Introduction, pp. 483 - 516Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006