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Section
1: Gaining Knowledge through Research
Section
2: Experimental Methods
Section
3: Types of Research
Section
4: Analyzing Research Results
Section
5: Introduction to Assessment
Section
6: Assessment Theories
Section
7: Analyzing Assessment Techniques
Assessment
Basics
Many
of us have taken some sort of psychological test,
whether for mental health reasons, potential
employment, job evaluations, or research.
Their are basically three reasons that assessment
devices are developed. If you recall the five
goals of psychology (describe, explain, predict,
control, improve), you'll see how they are directed
related to these goals.
Research
Psychological
assessment is often developed to assist with
research. Imagine that you wanted to determine
if a difference existed between the motivation of
first born children and last born children.
You would first need to define the construct of
motivation and then determine how you would measure
that construct. A good way to do this is to
develop a test, or assessment device, that measures
motivation. Once the test is normed and
standardized, you can then administer it to your
group of first borns and your group of last borns
and then perform your statistical analysis on the
results.
Diagnosis
and Prediction
A
second way psychological assessment is used is
during treatment of disorders in order to help
diagnosis or determine current level of
functioning. In the non-mental health arena,
such as in business and human relations, assessment
techniques are used to help identify individual or
group strengths and weaknesses. In either
case, the results are used to make recommendations
for improvement.
Treatment
Progress
Some
assessment, including those used for the above
purpose, can be used to get a baseline of
functioning. Once this is established, a
therapist or medical provider can retest the
individual at varying intervals to determine if
changes are taking place. Imagine the person
who presents with depression and scores a ten out of
ten on some depression test. After treatment,
they are given the same test and score a one out of
ten. This would suggest (if of course the test
was a good measure of depression) that treatment had
been successful.
Through
the rest of this chapter we'll discuss different
types of assessment and, like research, look at how
to understand results.
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