TOOLS FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING

PRESENTED BY:
Anish Shrestha
Gambir Man Jyakhwo
Mitesh Shrestha
Rajiv Lama
Subodh Shakya
Post Graduate Diploma In Counseling Psychology
 Topics to be dealt with
• What is psychological testing ?
• Why is psychological testing important ?
• What are the different tools being used for
psychological testing ?
– Interview
– Direct observation
– Objective techniques
– Projective techniques
 Psychological Testing
• An objective and standardized measure of an
individual's mental and/or behavioral characteristics.
• Health Professions Act, 56 of 1974
– A psychological act with respect to assessment is
defined as being “the use of measures to assess
mental, cognitive, or behavioural processes and
functioning, intellectual or cognitive ability or
functioning, aptitude, interest, emotions,
personality, psycho physiological functioning, or
psychopathology (abnormal functioning).
 Principles of Psychological Testing
• Standardization

• Objectivity

• Test Norms

• Reliability

• Validity
 Dimensions of Test
• Interest
• Aptitude
• IQ
• Public safety employment tests
• Achievement tests
• Personality inventories
• Neuropsychological tests

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 Importance of Psychological testing
• Helps to get an accurate impression of
the client’s patterns of relating
• May help us determine whether the client
is a good candidate for therapy
• May assist us in the choice of treatment
methods
• May help preexisting therapeutic
relationship
 Psychological Assessment
• A process that involves checking the integration of
information from multiple sources, such as tests of
normal and abnormal personality, tests of ability or
intelligence, tests of interests or attitudes, as well as
information from personal interviews.
• Collateral information is also collected about personal,
occupational, or medical history, such as from records
or from interviews with parents, spouses, teachers, or
previous therapists or physicians.
• Involves a more comprehensive assessment of an
individual.
 Key Ingredients
• Successful assessment requires knowledge of:
– Psychological tests
– Psychopathology
– Interviewing
– Statistics
– Development
– Hypothesis testing
– Your self
 Psychological Testing vs. Assessment
• Psychological tests are one component of assessment
• Assessment
– Multiple measures/tests
– Multiple domains
– Multiple sources e.g. parents, friends, teachers
– Multiple observations e.g. observation, naturalistic
– Multiple occasions (if you are lucky!)
– All this info is then synthesized and integrated

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Interview
 Interview
• Give and take of views
• Three fold purpose:
– Gathering all the pertinent facts
– Making a diagnosis based of all the
evidence
– Formulating a proper plan of action
• Can be either unstructured, semi-unstructured
or structured
 Types of Interview

• Fact- finding interview

• Informative interview

• Therapeutic interview
 Interviewing Techniques
• Establishing rapport is crucial
• Moving from open-ended to closed-ended
questions (general to specific)
– Tell me about why you’re here today?
– What about school is most difficult for you?
– Are you failing math because you didn’t hand in your
homework….not studying……didn’t understand the
material?
• Avoid
– Double-barreled questions (“and”, “or”)
– Long, multiple questions
– Leading questions
– Psychological jargon
 Examiner Nonverbal Behavior
Positive Behaviors Negative Behaviors
Good eye contact Avoiding eye contact, staring or
peering

Body posture—leaning towards Body posture - laid back, feet

child propped up

Interested, natural voice Interrupting child often

Not engaging in distracting Looking at watch, chewing gum,
gestures running hands through hair, etc.

Taking minimal notes while Taking excessive notes and

continuing to make frequent seldom looking at child
eye contact
 Interviews
• These face-to-face encounters often are the first
contact between a client and a clinician/assessor
– Used to collect detailed information, especially
personal history, about a client
• Allow the interviewer to focus on whatever topics
they consider most important
– Focus depends on theoretical orientation

Comer, Abnormal Psychology, 7e 17

 Limitations:
– May lack validity or accuracy
• Individuals may be intentionally misleading
– Interviewers may be biased or may make
mistakes in judgment
– Interviews, particularly unstructured ones, may
lack reliability
 The Obstacle

• What problems should be discussed in an

interview?
Direct observation
 Objective Tests
• Objective test involve the administration of a
standard set of questions or statements to
which the examinee responds using a fixed set
of potions.
• Many objectives test use a true false or yes/no
response format others provide a dimensional
scale (e.g. o=strong disagree; 1= disagree; 2=
neutral; 3= agree; 4= strongly agree).
 MMPI(Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory)-2
• 567 True/False items
• Not face valid
• Empirical keying approach
• 3 (primary) Validity scales
• 10 Clinical scales
• Scores based on clusters of items
• Problem-focused test
• Variety of administration and scoring approaches
 MMPI-2 Validity Scales
Reflects test-taking attitude

– L Scale = “Lie” (Honesty vs. Lying)

– F Scale = “Frequency” (barometer of distress)
– K Scale = K-Correction (Open vs. Guarded)
 MMPI-2 Clinical Scales
• Scale 1 - Hypochondriasis (Hs)
• Scale 2 - Depression (D)
• Scale 3 - Hysteria (Hy)
• Scale 4 - Psychopathic
Deviate (Pd)
• Scale 5 - Mascul./Femin. (Mf)
• Scale 6 - Paranoia (Pa)
• Scale 7 - Psychasthenia (Pt)
• Scale 8 - Schizophrenia (Sc)
• Scale 9 - Mania (Ma)
• Scale 0 - Social Introversion (Si)
• Excessive body concern
• Pessimism, hopelessness
• Awareness of problems
• Disregard of social
custom
• Traditional sex roles
• Suspiciousness, delusions
• Worry, anxiety, obsessive
• Bizarre thought/behavior
• Flight of ideas,
overactivity
• Shyness, disinterest in
others
 MMPI-2: What can it show?

• Test-Taking Attitude
• Current Emotional State
– Likely clinical symptoms
• Personality characteristics
• Interpersonal Style & Coping Strategies
• Predictions about:
– Response to psychological treatment
– Relationship difficulties
• Criticized due to mismatch on DSM classifications
 MBTI

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is a tool or

framework for understanding our own Personality
Type and that of others.
• It is an indicator not a test so there are no right
or wrong answers
• It looks at normal behaviour
• It identifies preferences rather than
competencies, abilities or skills.
 Background and History
• Based on Swiss psychologist Carl Jung’s
“Type” Theory (1920s)
• Behavior is individual and predictable
• Developed by Katherine Briggs (mother) and
Isabel Myers (daughter) (1940s)
• 40+ years of research
• Most widely used personality indicator in the
world
• Approximately 1 to 3 million people are
administered the MBTI each year
 The Four Dimensions of Type
Preferences are not absolutes: everyone uses all eight

Extraversion and Introversion

Where you prefer to get and focus your ‘energy’ or attention

Sensing and iNtuition

What kind of information you prefer to gather and trust

Thinking and Feeling

What process you prefer to use in coming to decisions

Judging and Perceiving

What process you prefer to use in coming to decisions
 Assumptions of Type Theory
• Preferences are inborn.
• Environment enhances or impedes expression of
type.
• We use both poles at different times, but not with
equal confidence
• All of the types are equally valuable.
 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Helps you identify your unique gifts
• Helps you understand yourself
– Motivations
– Natural strengths
– Potential areas for growth
• Helps you understand and appreciate people who
differ from you
• Helps you make the best of your college experience
• Helps you begin the career exploration process
 Advantages of Objective Test
• Objective tests of personality or self-report have had a central role
in the development of clinical psychology.

• First of all, their economical. After only brief instructions, large

groups can be tested simultaneously, or a single patient can
completed inventory alone. Even computer scoring an
interpretation of these tests are possible.

• Second, scoring and administration are relatively simple and

objective. This in turn tends to make the interpretation easier and
seems to require less interpret to skill of the part of the clinician.

• A final attraction to self-report inventories, particularly for

clinicians who are disenchanted with the problems inherent in
projective tests, is their appearance objectivity and reliability.
 Disadvantages of Objective Tests

• For clinicians who tend to pay little attention to mediating variables such as
motives or cognitions, this is a virtue rather than aid defect.

• Inventories often provide a single overall score, which may reflect various
combinations of these behaviors, cognitions, and needs. Therefore, to individuals
were achieved the same score may actually be quite different, even in reference
to the personality traits or construction in question. Thus, the same score on a
measure may have several alternative interpretations.

• Other difficulties involved a transparent meeting of some inventories questions,

which can obviously facilitate faking on the part of some patients. Some tests
tend to develop heavily on the patience self-knowledge.

• In addition, the forced choice approach prevents individuals from qualifying or

elaborating their responses to that some additional information may be lost or
distorted the limited understanding or even the limited reading ability of some
individuals may lead them to misinterpret question or to answer questions and a
random fashion.
 The Projective Techniques
• Projective tests allow the examinee to respond to
vague stimuli with their own impressions
• Assumption is that the examinee will project his
unconscious needs, motives, and conflicts onto
the neutral stimulus
• Word association tests, inkblot tests, sentence
completion tests, storytelling in response to
pictures, etc.
Characteristics of Projective Methods
• In response to an ambiguous/unstructured
stimulus, examinee is forced to impose his own
structure, and in so doing reveals something of
himself
• The stimulus material is unstructured
• The method is indirect
• Allow for freedom of response
• Response interpretation deals with more variables
 The Rorschach Inkblot Test
• The Rorschach Inkblot Test is the most commonly
used projective test
– It is one of the most widely used tests that exists
– It is widely cited in research
 History

• Herman Rorschach, a Swiss

psychiatrist, was the first to
suggest (1911) the use of
inkblot responses as a
diagnostic instrument
– In 1921 he published his book on
the test, Psychodiagnostik (and
soon thereafter died, age 38)
 What is the Rorschach?
• The stimuli were generated by dropping ink onto a card and folding it
– They are not, however, random: the ten cards in the current test
were hand-selected out of thousands that Rorschach generated

• Ten blots – 5 black/white, 2 red/gray (II & III) and 3 color (VIII – X)

• Thought to tap into the deep layers of personality and bring out what
is not conscious to the test taker

• The following are the inkblots

Scoring
 Thematic Apperception Test
Description
• Henry Murray (1938)
• Series of picture cards
(n=31) (usually
depicting human
action and/or
interaction). A few
contain only objects
 Thematic Apperception Test
• Administration
• Typically select between 6 to 12 cards
• Patients are instructed to make up a story
about each of the pictures including:
• Who people are, what they are doing, what they
are thinking and feeling, and how story ends
• Patients’ responses are timed and transcribed
verbatim
• Responses are coded along dimensions
measuring constructs such as needs, emotions,
conflicts, attitudes, etc
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Thematic Apperception Test
Sand Play technique
 Other common projective tests
• CAT – Children Apperception Test – (Bellak, 1975)
• Word Association Test – Rapaport et al. (1946, 1968) – 60 words:
neutral and traumatic – scored: popularity, RT, content, test-
retest responses
• Sentence Completion – Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank – 40
sentences – evaluated on 7 point scale by “need for therapy” to
“extremely good adjustment”
• House-Tree-Person Test (Buck, 1948) & Draw-A-Person
(Machover, 1949): Subject is asked to draw
– Scoring is on absolute size, relative size of elements, omissions

"If there is a tendency to over-interpret projective test data without

sufficient empirical grounds, then projective drawing tests are
among the worst offenders."
Kaplan & Saccuzo, Psychological Testing, 2001, p. 467
 The Use and Abuse of Testing
• Testing is big business. Psychological, educational, and Personnel Corporations
sell many thousands of tests each year.

• Protections. The American psychological Association's ethical standards require

that psychologists use only techniques or procedures that lie within their
competence.
• In addition, the purchase of Testing Materials is generally restricted by the
publisher to individuals or institutions that can demonstrate their competence in
administering, scoring, and interpreting tests.

• The question of privacy. The examinee must be given only test relevant to the
purpose of the evaluation.

• The question of confidentiality. Information revealed to psychiatrist and clinical

psychologist is typically regarded as a privilege, there are continuing assaults on
the right to withhold such information. For example, the Tarasoff decision of the
plant California Supreme Court makes it clear that information provided by a
patient in the course of therapy cannot remain privileged if that information
indicates that the patient may be dangerous.
 The Use and Abuse of Testing
• The question of discrimination. Within psychology, attacks
have centered on ways in which test discriminate against
minorities. It is often charge that most psychological tests are
really designed for white middle-class population and that
other groups are being tested with the devices that are
inappropriate for them.
• Stanford Prison Experiment : Follow Class notes

• Test bias. It is important to remember that significant

differences between man scores on a test different groups do
not in and of themselves indicate test bias or discrimination.
Rather, test bias or discrimination is a validity issue. That is, if
it can be demonstrated that the validity of a tests varies
significantly across groups, then a case can be made that the
test is biased for that purpose
 Materials Covered

• Introduction to Psychological testing

• Importance of psychological testing
• Interview and its types
• Assessment through direct observation
• Objective techniques and its types
• Projective techniques and its types
• Various aspects of psychological testing
 Conclusion

• Therefore, various tools can be used either

independently or in an integrated format to figure
out the various psychological processes and
functioning of an individual.
 REFERENCES
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/psychological testing
• Preston-Dillon. D, Sand Therapies: Sandplay and Sandtray,
Mining Report –May(2008)
• PRESENTATION ON THE TOPIC “PSYCHOLOGICAL
TESTING” by Robyn von Maltzahn
• PRESENTATION ON THE TOPIC “Introduction to
Psychological Assessment of Children” by Gregg Selke
• PRESENTATION ON THE TOPIC “An MBTI Approach to
More Effective Team Working: understanding self and others”
by Kathy Duffy
• PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT SEMINAR
CONDUCTED BY Department of Industrial & Organisational
Psychology 18 August 2010.
Thank you !!