Comprehensive Guide to Psychological Testing and Assessment in Psychology

Hi everyone, this is Obian and we are continuing with our videos in this channel A to Z psychology with Obian.

You're welcome back and today we are going to be talking about a very interesting course as a student of

psychology and as a finite student of psychology. We are going to be talking about psychological testing one. Yeah,

this course features in first semester and fishes also in second semester. So psychological testing one, yeah,

psychological testing and test construction one and psychological test and test construction two. So you will

be having a lot of understanding about the what is psychological test what is assessment and every other thing in this

semester all those type of instruments and or test instruments you'll be seeing them here and then next semester you'll

be expected to at least know how to use some of them how to see them in action in your or it can also be a continuation

of other test you might not have been exposed to. Now we are talking about psychological tests. As a clinical

psychologist or as a psychologist we we know that psychological tests are not enough to talk about in person that

there are a a lot of other areas we look at if before we that that helps us to

understand individuals. Right? So that's why it's very important we first talk about psychological assessment.

Psychological assessment is a bigger term, right? It's a bigger term that covers all the assessment

protocols, right? It covers the like we use it to assess individuals mental abilities,

their behaviors, their uh um should I say interest, their personality, their intelligence.

In fact, everything accessible about you is done here. Where are you from? How was your childhood?

What is your IQ level? That is intelligent cognitive situation, right? All of those things are under this

assessment. So you will discover that when we talk about psychological testing or tests we you will see that all

psychological tests or tests yes under psychological assessment but psychological assessment is a bigger

umbrella that covers more than psychological tests. Now there are four principle areas we assess when we are

doing psychological assessment. There are four areas or four types of psychological assessments in which

psychical test is one. Right? So what are the four areas? One is the behavioral observations that will come

next semester. Uh next semester you do a lot of mental status examination. We want to see how you look. You know

people's dressing shows you who is under drugs and who is not. Even the way they walk, we take their hair, whether it's

well kept, whether woman or not woman, whether their clothes are neat, whether they are still good in taking care of

themselves, even their their fingernails, the way they smile, their mood, is it flattened, the way they

walk. Oh boy, they have a lot to say, right? So that is behavioral observation. I'm just trying to give

that idea. Then the second one is clinical interview. Clinical interview is also a case of next semester testing

too. You also engage in that next semester you will see a lot who is your the parents your relationship with your

parents. Have you been in a lot of questions and the clinical interview will have those things. Is your is your

father dead or alive? If dead what killed him and was he a drug user? When did he stop school? What was your

relationship with with him? Is your mother this and that? Is he a drug user? If he died, what killed him or what

killed her and all of those things. What of your siblings? What is your relationship with them? Have you been in

prison before? Have you been sick before? What was your childhood when you were born? Please, next semester. Number

three we are having is the neurological. Neurological assessments also is a part of the that is the third protocol. Part

of the protocol assessment protocol. Yeah. The neurological is when we are now checking your brain situations, your

brain activities so that we know whether there is one of the wire that have detached. [laughter]

So or a part of the brain that is malfunctioning, let me use that word. So this is where we consider the MRIs of

this world, the cat, computer tomography, the position emission tomography, the magnet resonant imaging,

the functional magnits and what have you, right? And the fourth one is psychological

testing. And this is where we now use psychological instruments to investigate you and know what's up. Right? We can

check your interest here. We can check disorders here. We can check uh your attitudes. We can check your

behaviors in terms of your interests, your hobbies. Yeah, that's about my personality,

right? So now what is psychological test or what is a what is psychological testing? This is a process of using a

psychological test or using of a psychical instrument to quantify a particular

behavior or to it will help us to understand a behavior either to predict a behavior to

assess um to have a good understanding about our behavior that is the major thing to obtain

an aspect of a behavior So one thing we do is we try to operationalize a particular behavior and in

operationalizing it psychological instruments or tests helps us to do what? Assess the presence or absence or

the level of that behavior or that aspect of behavior in

every individual. So when we talk about psychological tests they can be in In terms of scales like questionaers, they

can be in in ways like other bigger instruments right calibrated and scaled normed

instruments right which we are going to be discussing soon. Um most of them come with items. Please is important. We know

that we have items, right? When we hear the word item, it's simply those questions asked in the questioner. For

example, they are they are um those um stimulus you respond to, right?

So, so that is that and the behavior we should understand also that uh psychological tests can assess could be

over or covert right over covert. Now um at this point what is uh what are the type of tests we have? I will give you a

little rundown to have a general understanding of tests then we will come down concluding with the kind of tests

that you are supposed to be exposed in this course. So because as a finite student or at this point trying to

understand what we're talking about in psychological tests we not necessarily if you have watched me I'm not

necessarily trying to tell assessment conceptually or define psychological testing right we we but I've at least

pointed it out with other videos we know that we try to take individuals thought patterns their emotions their behaviors

their aspects of behavior their interest, their hobbies. These instruments are able to tap into those

things and get them. Now, what are they? The types we have. Um we have the ones we call individual

tests, group tests, right? Um from the name we know there are tests we can administer individually and one we

administer group by group. Right. Right. Like um we have MNPI is individual, vular is individual, async personality

inventory is individual and so on. Right. Then the group is instruments we have in 945 Robert alpha test and beta

test. The alpha for the literate group I mean I mean army test and then the the better test is for the non literate is

not the illiterate right because they're not illiterates as much as they cannot read or write doesn't mean they are they

are all all intelligent or they are non literates right? Then um so that is um then we have other type of test we call

the ability tests. This one want to check your ability. Uh there are ones that are time sensitive and there are

one that are we call the that one like speed test. speed test are always very big right like what I mean like long is

easy but few time they want to many people doesn't do not finish are not able to

finish speed test it's hard to finish speed test but they want to check how fast and how long you will go with ease

right but it takes it takes for the time to take you to execute that and Then the next we look at is when we are talking

about uh power test also is another ability test and this one uh is power test is more

difficult but they give you time. In power test is more difficult but you are given time. Then achievement test at

this situation like your exam. Achievement test want to check your your performance in your exams. and no um

like residual memories the memory existing how far have you gone as a student and everything or as a train a

trainee in a particular situation. Then the other way around we look at aptitude tests. Example of aptitude test we have

GRE we call it graduate record exam. We have um scholastic aptitude tests also the oppos

right these are exams that are not checking what you have achieved or what you know already your memory but they

are checking how if you have as one of the ability tests they also interested to know if you have the ability to go

through such a training like you are preparing for university school are you ready for that are you having the

qualities to engage in that that is what attitude tests are interested. If you go through a training or like um enter um

let's say a a job they expect that your aptitude test should reflect the fact that if you

are trained to use a machine a machine for example to use an instrument or to engage in um um customers you are able

to do all of those things. Aptitude test takes care of that. Then uh what other things we we have

intelligent tests. U intelligent tests look at your problem solving abilities, your adaptability, your versatility that

is do you profit from previous experiences and everything. Personality tests also on the other hand look at

your interests, your traits, your typical behaviors, your traits, your temperaments. Right now we we going down

to what we are in for today. The objective and projective tests. What are they? The objective tests are

these tests we refer to as the one that have standardized way of scoring, administration and interpretation.

They are well calibrated. They have uh you see the one that are dichomous, the one that are in legal scales like

multi-dimensional response format, they are scoring formats. Your way of responding to them is already outlined

and the way it will be interpreted independent of whoever is going to interpret it. No matter the clinician,

right? It is outlined. Nobody is going to use their own bias or their own expatry. The only expat you need to have

is two. one the expert about psychological testing and three sorry two the expat about that particular how

to interpret that instrument how to uh administer score and interpret um the other way around projective tests

do not have a stipulated way of responding interpreting scoring and interpretation of time they

could even score no yeah these Under projective test we have vesa vla intelligent test for example is an

objective test uh mmpi is an objective test we're going to be looking at them then under the projective tests you

would have called it subjective tests because the responses are subjective to how the

or subject to how the client or the test taker views or perceives it. And then the

uh it's not this response now the scoring and interpretation of those responses as submitted by the client is

also subject to the expert and the ability of the of the of the clinician on how he or she understood what the

client has submitted. you start making you see there are a lot of subjective but we don't call them subjective most

times right key feature of objective instruments are that they their reliability and validity is very high

right so reasons why we call subjective projective tests are something we'll talk about in the next uh video and this

is the size of the video thank you very