Psychological Testing and Assessment: an Introduction to Tests and Measurement 7Th Edition

Psychology Psychological Testing and Assessment: An Introduction to Tests and Measurement 7th Edition Cohen−Swerdlik McGraw-Hillabc McGraw−Hill Primis ISBN−10: 0−39−011360−3 ISBN−13: 978−0−39−011360−3 Text: Psychological Testing and Assessment: An Introduction to Tests and Measurement, Seventh Edition Cohen−Swerdlik This book was printed on recycled paper. Psychology http://www.primisonline.com Copyright ©2009 by The McGraw−Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. This McGraw−Hill Primis text may include materials submitted to McGraw−Hill for publication by the instructor of this course. The instructor is solely responsible for the editorial content of such materials. 111 PSYCGEN ISBN−10: 0−39−011360−3 ISBN−13: 978−0−39−011360−3 Psychology Contents Cohen−Swerdlik • Psychological Testing and Assessment: An Introduction to Tests and Measurement, Seventh Edition Front Matter 1 Preface 1 I. An Overview 13 1. Psychological Testing and Assessment 13 2. Historical, Cultural, and Legal/Ethical Considerations 47 II. The Science of Psychological Measurement 83 3. A Statistics Refresher 83 4. Of Tests and Testing 113 5. Reliability 151 6. Validity 184 7. Utility 220 8. Test Development 245 III. The Assessment of Intelligence 289 9. Intelligence and Its Measurement 289 10. Tests of Intelligence 322 11. Preschool and Educational Assessment 357 IV. The Assessment of Personality 390 12. Personality Assessment: An Overview 390 13. Personality Assessment Methods 436 V. Testing and Assessment in Action 481 14. Clinical and Counseling Assessment 481 15. Neuropsychological Assessment 524 16. Assessment, Careers, and Business 557 Back Matter 605 References 605 Credits 653 Name Index 655 Glossary/Index 663 iii Cohen−Swerdlik: Front Matter Preface © The McGraw−Hill 1 Psychological Testing and Companies, 2010 Assessment: An Introduction to Tests and Measurement, Seventh Edition Preface II n the late 1970s, when work fi rst began on our introductory measurement text, there were a few existing textbooks on measurement in psychology. All of them were up to the task of providing students with a basic grounding in psychometrics. However, having used some of these texts as students ourselves, we were also aware of some very real problems that they shared. From our perspective, the problems with the existing texts were as follows: ■ Reading them was a challenge; they seemed to be written more for instructors to teach from than for students to learn from. ■ The writing was rigidly academic, lacking any hint of a “hands-on,” working knowledge of what was being written about. One might read the entire text, cover- to-cover, and fi nd no evidence that the writer ever really administered or was called upon to interpret test fi ndings, let alone take action on them. ■ Coverage of certain subjects—legal/ethical issues in assessment, cultural issues in assessment, forensic assessment, neuropsychological assessment, psychological assessment in business—was all but nonexistent. ■ Portions of many of the chapters were quite heavy with descriptions of tests, giving these portions of the text a distinct, Tests in Print –type “feel.” ■ The art program consisted mostly of number-intensive graphs and tables, as well as some photos of test materials. Many of these illustrations (particularly of the latter variety) seemed to be inserted more to break up text than to stimulate the reader’s imagination or to solidify associations with whatever was being written about. ■ Coverage of the heritage and history of the enterprise was scant. Little or no effort was made to convey a sense of where all of the facts and formulas being presented fi t within the grand scheme or context of the subject matter. ■ An assumption inherent in the writing seemed to be that every student taking the course was up-to-speed on all of the statistical concepts that would be necessary to learn about psychometric concepts such as reliability and validity. ■ A similar assumption was seemingly inherent in chapters having to do with the assessment of abilities and personality. Authors assumed that all students were uniformly familiar with the defi nitional issues and controversies surrounding terms such as intelligence and personality. We wanted something better for a new generation of students. First and foremost, the book we envisioned would have to contain all of the material necessary to provide students with a sound grounding in basic psychometrics. But beyond presenting all that was necessary for students to achieve a clear conceptual understanding of the assessment enterprise, we would strive to present the material in a meaningful context. This meant that an unprecedented effort would be made to “breathe life” into all of the num- bers, equations, models, and other statistics-related material—material that seemed to put off so many students going into the course. xiii 2 Cohen−Swerdlik: Front Matter Preface © The McGraw−Hill Psychological Testing and Companies, 2010 Assessment: An Introduction to Tests and Measurement, Seventh Edition First and foremost, our objective was to create a measurement textbook that provided a basic grounding in psychometrics and effectively overviewed the enterprise. However, our book would part company with existing textbooks in several ways: ■ Our book would be one that would not only be easy for instructors to teach from, but one that students could painlessly learn from (by virtue of its engaging content and appropriate level of writing). ■ Our book, while scholarly and well referenced with authoritative sources, would still convey the “hands-on” feel that the authors had with tests. Unlike many of the people writing about testing and assessment then (as well as today), we actually had a great deal of experience administering, scoring, and interpreting tests in clinical, counseling, school, and business-related contexts. We felt that students could profi t from our sharing of this experience. ■ It was our view that students taking an overview course in measurement should have a solid grounding in legal/ethical issues, as well as psychometrics. Accordingly, discussion of legal/ethical issues, which sets a context for all that follows, was placed early on in the book (Chapter 2). A clear need also existed for coverage of other areas of test use (such as neuropsychological and forensic applications), and this material was presented in a later section we called “Testing and Assessment in Action.” ■ We would provide descriptions of some illustrative tests where appropriate. However, we would direct students to reference sources for more extensive descriptions of various tools of assessment. ■ The art program for the text that we envisioned would complement the writing in terms of humanizing the material and making the material timely and relevant. Photos would be used not only to give students a better sense of the historical personages we mentioned, but to, more generally, solidify associations with the concepts presented. ■ In our experience, many students taking an introductory course in measurement had never taken a course in history and systems. This fact, combined with the fact that we viewed a knowledge of historical events to be desirable—and had personally found learning about such events to be fascinating—prompted the inclusion of intriguing historical material in Chapter 2, as well as elsewhere throughout the book. By the way, beginning with the sixth edition, we created a Timeline for placement in the inside covers of the text to further pique student interest in the heritage of the enterprise. ■ Despite the fact that a course in statistics was typically a prerequisite for taking a measurement course, we thought it unrealistic to expect that all students would be uniformly up-to-speed with regard to the knowledge of statistics needed to succeed. For this reason, a “statistics refresher,” would be the fi rst chapter in the section that dealt with statistics-related material. The “refresher” could, of course, be assigned or not at the discretion of the instructor. ■ Logic dictated to us that preliminary discussion of the subjects of intelligence and personality was necessary to help lay a necessary foundation for more detailed treatment of these constructs in an assessment-related context. This book was originally published by a small, independent publisher. To give the reader an idea of how small that publisher was, it had a sales force of about fi ve people (which included both the president of the company as well as the editor). By compari- son, the existing books were published by publishers with dedicated sales forces of over xiv Preface Cohen−Swerdlik: Front Matter Preface © The McGraw−Hill 3 Psychological Testing and Companies, 2010 Assessment: An Introduction to Tests and Measurement, Seventh Edition 100 people. The “marketing” of the fi rst edition of our book consisted of our publisher buying a list of instructors who taught a measurement course and then sending out a sample copy of the book to everyone on that list. But apparently, it did not take much more than that for us to win over instructors and students. One after another, instructors voiced appreciation for our perspective on the discipline, our selection of topics to be covered, and our lucid presentation of the material. By the time we began work on the second edition, our textbook was the one that was being emulated by all of the oth- ers. It still is. Today, coverage of many of the topics we fi rst deemed to be essential in a measurement text is now “standard” among measurement textbooks. We assure you that such material—a statistics refresher, coverage of behavioral assessment, coverage of legal and ethical issues, and so on—were by no means standard when the fi rst edition of our book was published.

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