Take a brief Counseling Test Quiz 101

Can you answer these questions that every counselor ought to know?

Choose the BEST available answer.

I'll post the answers below.

1. If the correlation between a test of intelligence and a test of achievement is usually between .88 and .92, how well can you use the intelligence test results to predict achievement test results?

A. Very well
B. Moderately well
C. Not well at all
D. None of the above

2. A personality test score was high on a scale of Extraversion. The validity of the Extraversion scale was reported as .52 to .57 compared to similar tests. How much confidence should the person have that their score is "valid?"

A. A high degree
B. A moderate degree
C. A low degree
D. None of the above

3. School counselors administered a questionnaire to 1,000 students. They calculated results for answers about four school improvements rated on a scale of 1 to 5. Most of the scores were in the range of 18 to 20. The counselors reported a mean rating of 4.6 for each of the 4 items. Based on these data, what should they have reported?

A. The mean is fine-- an average is all that is needed.
B. They should report the Mean and Standard Deviation.
C. They should report the reliability with the mean.
D. They should report the median and range.

4. An agency director asks a counselor to determine if there was evidence of improvement in well-being for clients in one of three treatment groups. Assuming a normal distribution of the data, which of the following statistical procedures could provide the best answer?

A. An independent samples t test
B. A one-way analysis of variance
C. A two-way analysis of variance
D. A chi-square test





ANSWERS



1. A. Other things being equal, the correlation between the two tests is strong thus, most of the time the intelligence test score will be a good predictor of the achievement test score. See Chapter 12 in Applied Statistics: Concepts for Counselors.

2. C. We do not know much about the validation of the Extraversion scale ; however, we know the validity values in the .50s are low so the best answer, given the limited data, is C. Validity coefficients range from 0.0 to 1.0. Important note: Validity is a product of the interpretation of data based on scores. Although it is common to refer to a test's validity, tests really do not have validity. Instead, there is a history of validity statistics and interpretations associated with validity. See chapter 20 in Applied Statistics: Concepts for Counselors.

3. D. The data appeared skewed given that 4 items on a 5-point scale would yield a maximum of 20. So, based on the limited data, the median would be the most typical value. When reporting the mean, counselors ought to report the standard deviation, but in this case, the median appears to be the best value. See Chapters 7-10 of Applied Statistics: Concepts for Counselors.

4. A one-way analysis of variance can be used to analyze data from two or more groups. If the overall value is statistically significant, t tests or other post hoc tests can be used to compare pairs of means. See Chapters 15-17 of Applied Statistics: Concepts for Counselors.



APPLIED STATISTICS: CONCEPTS FOR COUNSELORS is available as an eBook or paperback from AMAZON.

Book website  
https://sites.google.com/view/counselorstatistics/home

"If you need to review basic statistics and don’t know where to begin, this book is perfect! It makes difficult concepts easy to understand. I would recommend it for my undergraduate students who haven’t had Statistics in a while and need a refresher, or for graduate students facing their first graduate level research class!"

...Heather L. Kelly, Psy.D., Professor of Psychology, Evangel University

Springfield, Missouri, USA

You may also find this book relevant.

CREATING SURVEYS

What makes a test valid?

 

What makes a test valid? is a tricky question. 

The short, and rather obnoxious response is, “nothing.” 

Like reliability, validity is a property of test scores

 rather than tests but more accurately, an interpretation
of the scores.

But it is important to take the question seriously when test-takers and users are wondering how much confidence to place in a test score. As with many aspects of science, the answers can be simply stated but there is a complicated backstory.

Validity Traditions

For many, the traditional views of test score validity will be sufficient. Tests measure constructs. Scientific constructs are ideas that have features that can be measured like reading comprehension, dominance, short-term memory, and verbal intelligence.

Construct validity is not a single entity but rather the current state of knowledge about how a test instrument’s scores have functioned in many settings and in relation to criteria. Construct validity primarily includes findings from studies of content validity, convergent validity and discriminant validity.

Content validity is based on judgment analysis from experts who mostly agree that test items measure the construct (e.g., marital satisfaction).

The other types of validity are based on the concept of correlations with a criterion. Researchers ask participants to take a specific test X along with other tests Y and Z. Test X is the test of interest such as a new math achievement test. Test Y represents other similar tests such as other math tests. When test X and test Y yield similar scores we have evidence of convergent validity.

When test X and test Z yield dissimilar results such as a relationship between our test X math achievement and test Z vocabulary, we have evidence of discriminant validity—a math test ought not to measure vocabulary aside from the minimal vocabulary used in the instructions and word problems. The relationship between the tests is based on a statistic called the validity coefficient, which will vary anytime you have a group of people taking two tests—even the very same people will get different scores on two different testing dates.

Criterion validity compares test scores to some criterion. The relationship between depression test scores measuring depression today is called concurrent validity. The relationship between test scores today and some future measurable performance is predictive validity—for example, a pre-employment test may be correlated with supervisor ratings after six months on the job.

Aside from content validity, most traditional studies are looking at the strength of the relationship between one set of test scores and another.

Factor analysis is a complex correlational procedure that examines the underlying relationship among test items and how they relate to other test items. For example, a set of vocabulary items may be correlated with answers to questions about general knowledge and be considered a “verbal factor” when the two sets of items may be grouped as representing an underlying verbal factor. These abstract underlying factors are sometimes called latent variables or latent traits.

Read more about validity of surveys and tests in CREATING SURVEYS- Chapter 18.

Counselors, read more about validity of test scores in APPLIED STATISTICS: CONCEPTS FOR COUNSELORS- Chapter 20.

Related Post

RELIABILITY 

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