Psychological Tests Health Article

Definition

Psychological tests are written, visual, or verbal evaluations administered to assess the cognitive and emotional functioning of children and adults.

Purpose

Psychological tests are used to assess a variety of mental abilities and attributes, including cognitive skills, motivation, personality traits, and neurological functioning.

Achievement and ability tests

Achievement and ability tests are designed to measure the level of an individual's intellectual functioning and cognitive ability. Most achievement and ability tests are standardized, meaning that norms were established during the design phase of the test by administering the test to a large representative sample of the test population. Achievement and ability tests follow a uniform testing

protocol, or procedure (i.e., test instructions, test conditions, and scoring procedures), and their scores can be interpreted in relation to established norms. Common achievement and ability tests include the Wechsler intelligence test (WISC-III and WAIS) and the Stanford-Binet intelligence scales.

Personality tests

Personality tests and inventories evaluate the thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and behavioral traits that comprise personality. The results of these tests determine an individual's personality strengths and weaknesses, and may identify certain disturbances in personality, or psychopathology. Such tests as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory III (MCMI-III), are used to screen individuals for specific psychopathologies or emotional problems.

Another type of personality test is the projective personality assessment. A projective test asks a subject to interpret some ambiguous stimuli, such as a series of inkblots. The subject's responses provide insight into his or her thought processes and personality traits. The best known projective psychological test is the Rorschach, or inkblot test. The patient is asked to look at each blot and to say what it looks like or what it could be. Because the stimulus is ambiguous, the patient must impose his or her own interpretation. In doing so, thoughts, feelings, and themes, some of which are unconscious, are projected into the material. Projective tests have lower validity and reliability than objective tests. However, the information they provide tends to be richer and more varied. Another projective assessment, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), asks the subject to tell a story about a series of pictures. The TAT is often used in a test battery in conjunction with the Rorschach. The TAT purports to provide information about important themes in a person's life or the content of their thinking, whereas the Rorschach provides information about the process and form of a person's thoughts. Although these tests are widely used, research has demonstrated that the examiners' subjective interpretations often affect the outcomes of these tests.