How psychological tests work: Understanding standardisation in Psychological Assessment: Thinking Innovatively in Contexts of Diversity

I was invited by editor, Ronél Ferreira, to contribute a chapter towards a textbook she was compiling with the aim of stimulating innovative thinking around the challenges facing psychological assessment in South Africa’s multicultural context.

The book was titled:

Psychological Assessment: Thinking innovatively in contexts of diversity

My contribution was:

The chapter covers:

• Introduction
• Conceptualising psychological testing
• Standardisation of psychological tests
  • Administration procedures
  • Scoring procedures
  • Norms
• Do reliability and validity matter?
  • Reliability
  • Validity
• Concluding comments on psychological tests and standardisation
• Example of a test standardised for the South African context
• Standardisation in South Africa
  • Are South African standardisations enough?
  • Construct universality or a lack thereof
• Conclusion
• Assessing new insights
• Further reading

My hope is that the chapter breaks down the concepts of psychometry in accessible language and stimulates critical thinking around the implementation of psychological assessment in South Africa.

Order here:

Juta: https://juta.co.za/catalogue/psychological-assessment-1e_23165

Loot: https://www.loot.co.za/product/ronel-ferreira-psychological-assessment/xjvt-3483-g000 

Van Schaik: https://www.vanschaik.com/book/561dee71dd79a/

Gadd, C. & Phipps, W.D. (2016). Chapter 4: How psychological tests work: Understanding standardisation in Ferreirra, R. (Ed). Psychological Assessment: Thinking Innovatively in Contexts of Diversity. Juta: Pretoria. (pp. 50-71)