Posted: September 14th, 2015

Critical Review of the Strong Interest Inventory test instrument

Critical Review of the Strong Interest Inventory test instrument

Order Description

The purpose of Assignment # 2 is to assess the following outcomes of your learning:
? understanding of fundamental concepts, frameworks, and theories in psychological assessment, including the nature and uses of psychological assessment, social and ethical issues, and central dimensions of individual differences;
? ability to critically reflect on, and dispute, claims relating to published tests, including those by the test author/publisher and critics;
? logical argumentation skills;
? familiarity with basic technical terms in the assessment/testing area;
? skill in searching psychological literature; retrieving, quoting, citing, and
referencing items from relevant publications;
? skills of summarising information found in scholarly literature and generating
novel insights;
? skills of academic writing at the senior undergraduate level, including
organisation and formatting of a brief paper.

What should my test review contain?
In formulating your critical evaluation and structuring your assignment, ‘An Outline for Test Evaluation’ (OTE; adapted after Anne Anastasi.

An Outline for Test Evaluation (OTE)
[adapted after:
Anastasi, A., Psychological testing (Sixth edition). Appendix B.]
Before you start:
? The outline contains basic features which are applicable to most tests.
? Additional features are noteworthy in the case of particular tests.
? A good preparation for writing a test critique may include a thorough reading of
the APA/AERA/NCME ‘Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing’, and a sample of test critiques in the ‘Mental Measurement Yearbooks’.
SECTION A General information
i. Title of test (including edition and forms if applicable)
ii. Author(s) of the test
iii. Publisher, year of publication (including publication year of manuals, norms,
and supplementary materials; especially important for tests whose content or
norms may become outdated)
iv. Time required to administer (in minutes)
v. Cost
SECTION B
Brief description of the purpose and nature of the test
i. General type (e.g., individual or group, performance, multiple aptitude battery, interest inventory, and so on)
ii. Population for which the test is designed (age rang, type of person)
iii. Nature of test content (e.g., verbal, numerical, spatial, motor)
iv. Sub-tests and separate scores
v. Item types
SECTION C Practical evaluation
Qualitative features of test materials (e. g., design of test booklet, editorial quality of content, ease of using, attractiveness, durability, appropriateness for test takers)
Ease of administration, including facilities for computer- assisted administration
Clarity of directions
iv. Scoring procedures, including automated scoring services and available
software
Examiner qualifications and training required

SECTION D Technical evaluation
i. Norms
? Type (e.g., percentiles, standard scores)
? Standardisation sample (nature, size, representativeness, procedures
followed in sampling, availability of subgroup norms – for age-, gender-, education-, occupation-, region-based subgroups)
ii. Reliability
? Types and procedures (e.g., test retest, parallel forms, split-half, Kuder-
Richardson or coefficient ), including size and nature of samples
employed
? Scorer reliability (if applicable)
? Equivalence of forms
? Long-term stability (when available)
iii. Validity
? Appropriate types of validation procedures (e.g., content-related, criterion-
related <predictive or concurrent>, construct-related)
? Specific procedures followed in assessing validity, and results gained
? Size and nature of samples employed
SECTION E Reviewers’ Comments
Published in ‘Mental Measurement Yearbooks’ or elsewhere
SECTION F Summary Evaluation

Major strengths and weaknesses of the test, cutting across all sections of the outline (test critique)
Which elements are indispensable?

The points in sections A (‘General information’) and B (‘Brief description’) of OTE are obligatory. You may address some of them concisely, and others in more detail, but please include information on all 10 points in your review. Note that without exactly identifying which test you are criticising, your critique will become meaningless and your assignment cannot be assessed at all.

It is strongly recommended that you elaborate on at least one point from Section C, and two points of D, in OTE. For instance, a good review may criticise Test X in detail as regards clarity of directions, and as regards validity and reliability. Alternatively, an assignment can contain criticisms regarding ease of administration, reliability, and norms. There are other combinations, but please remember: one from C, two from D.
You may consider that:
? each instrument can be viewed from a theoretical and an applied perspective. Applied perspectives include those of the clinician, the occupational psychologist, the business psychologist, or a professional working in the armed forces;
? each instrument can be discussed with a universal focus, concentrating on questions which are central to testing in any human culture; or an intercultural focus, which attends to peculiarities of particular regions and cultures and compares them; or a local focus;
? many instruments can be approached from an “average adult testee” perspective, disregarding age differences, or from a specific developmental perspective, highlighting the issues in testing a particular age group or groups.
Background material
You can rely on the vast psychometric literature when writing your essays. A minimum of 4 publications (other than your textbook) must be cited. In most cases a more profound literature search leads to a better quality essay; those using at least 10 items in the literature will be preferred and rated higher.

Criteria used in evaluating Assignment #2
i. When marking your assignment, the marker will primarily look for evidence of the skills and understanding listed under the heading ‘What does this assignment assess’. The points below pertain to additional elements often found in good assignments, and explain our evaluative views on them.
ii. Originality
Original insights which are relevant to the topic, but do not seem to have any direct association with ideas and results published in literature, will be greatly appreciated.
iii. Sound critical judgement and argumentation
Major critical statements should be corroborated by at least a few conceptual, theoretical or empirical/ practical arguments. The logical soundness and cohesion of these passages has weight in evaluation. Innovative criticism especially invites corroborating argument. Moderation and defensible refutation are more convincing than extremism and critique ad hominem. If you summarise criticism published by other authors you may wish to quote specific arguments underlying the criticism, rather than the critical assertions alone.
iv. Personal experience reviewed
Experience, gathered either from practice using the measuring instrument criticised (or closely related instruments), or learned from other practitioners may be included in the critique. Such a section will be welcomed if written up in a way connecting it to other parts of the critique which may provide a frame of reference and reflection. Please separate statements cited from literature versus personal experience.
v. Outlook
Assignments which evidence that the author has an informed outlook (ie., a wider conspectus regarding the set of problems to which the one specifically treated belongs, or the set of concepts from which one is taken as a particular target of analysis) will be highly evaluated.

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