Customer Reviews

Psychological Testing and Assessment

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Aiken's "Psychological Testing and Assessment" (11th ed.) is a well-organized and well-written work. Having used it to teach two undergraduate courses to date, I would have the following comments.

Aiken makes a few somewhat stereotypical assumptions in regard to certain aspects of assessments, particularly in regard to socioeconomic status and, less often, gender. He also tended to gloss over some rather important subjects such as Central Limit Theorem, which could have enjoyed a little more attention even though it is assumed that readers have completed at least basic statistics.

Altogether, however, the book is a very good choice for university level...either undergraduate or graduate...teaching of the principles and practice of testing and assessment.

Written 1996

There is doubtless a need for stolidly professional books about IQ-testing. Many trainees for psychology careers and research assistantships need to know how to test IQ even though they would rather spend their time bemoaning psychometrics and its latent ideologies of measurability and inequality. For apprehensive newcomers to the assessment of intelligence, Aiken's book is the near-perfect answer. It sets forth the nuts and bolts of standardized testing plainly, sensibly and in a way that is unlikely to upset anyone. Aiken provides three general chapters on history, concepts and procedures, seven Buros-style chapters on published tests, and concludes with three chapters touching on explanatory issues and the main obstacles to acceptance of IQ-testing. Everything that the trainee tester could want is here -- including a reminder to provide special desks for left-handers, and an intriguing specimen Parental Consent Form (in use by the Los Angeles Unified School District) offering the assurance that NO STANDARDIZED INTELLIGENCE (I.Q.) TESTS WILL BE GIVEN.

The 'balance' favoured by textbook writers is well maintained throughout. Every significant move towards assertion is rapidly followed by a disclaimer or denial. The Kaufman Ability Scales are commended, but their relative equalization of blacks and whites is admitted to depend on the inclusion of a larger-than-usual number of 'memory' subtests. The possible effect of birth order on IQ makes an interesting story; but it is acknowledged that recent research suggests some kind of failure of researchers to control adequately for later-borns necessarily coming from larger families. Likewise, though Howard Gardner supposedly "draws on developmental research findings to demonstrate the independence of [his] seven intelligences", readers are told twelve lines later that "his ideas are based more on reasoning and intuition than on the results of empirical research studies." Aiken probably favours London School claims; but he allows himself to go no further than pointing out difficulties with disunitarian and social-environmentalist viewpoints.

The other textbookish way of maintaining mock-scholarly detachment is simply to avoid key questions altogether. Aiken opts for this too. Despite a generous page allocation, he has little to say about whether IQ tests are fair, whether they are strongly correlated with 'basic processes', whether their variance is largely heritable, or whether what they test is critical to modern life outcomes. To answer any of these four questions requires some presentation of the techniques of psychometrics, factor analysis, inspection time and psychogenetics; but Aiken is happier to give these techniques a miss. He does not show how to check for fairness -- let alone does he rehearse actual empirical endorsements (e.g. Braden's (1994) demonstration of the tests' fairness with grossly culturally deprived deaf children). Aiken gives the conventional three-page 'outline' of factor analysis but does not actually show how factors are extracted, so he can claim exemption from discussing the percentages of variance explained by the g factor in contrast with specifics. Like most American researchers, he has apparently never heard of research on inspection time; he plumps for a heritability of .50 without saying whether this is NARROW or BROAD or indicating what such calculation involves; he declines to mention, let alone contest James Flynn's arguments for the unimportance of IQ; and, though his text has been revised to squeeze in a reference to Herrnstein and Murray (1994), Aiken makes virtually no use of their sociology-crushing results. All told, Aiken's heart is probably in the right place; but he evidently believes that the way to deal with hysterical political correctness about IQ is 'softly-softly'.

Thankfully there are relatively few outright mistakes -- though Aiken should have learned that his wish to 'update' the 1947 Raven's Matrices has been granted. Also, the British National Foundation for Educational Research has a UK address as well as one in Singapore; and the biblical selection of crack soldiers who scooped up water 'putting their hands to their mouth' (Judges vii 3-7, King James' 1611 Version) (rather than kneeling down and drinking face-into-the-water) would indeed have sorted out those men who took wise precautions against surprise attack. Trainees will also be glad that Aiken's chapters are accompanied by redundancy-increasing Summaries and by 'Questions and Activities' that will assist preparation for the now conventional examination of trainees' rote learning abilities in today's universities.

REFERENCES:
BRADEN, J. P. (1994). Deafness, Deprivation and IQ. New York : Plenum.
HERRNSTEIN, R. & MURRAY, C. (1994). The Bell Curve. New York : The Free Press.

I have honestly never had a bad experience buying a used textbook from Amazon before, but I guess there's a first time for everything. This book must have been bought and sold by at least 5 or 6 different students before I happened to be unfortunate enough to end up with it. It was filled with writing in the margins--nothing helpful either (i.e., jibberish, chickenscratch, etc.). Not to mention, the aforementioned 6 owners each highlighted just about 95% of the entire book each in a different color. Since that exhausted every possible color available, I was forced to put brackets around important info and/or underline crap with a pencil. And whoever managed to basically rip the book in half and "cleverly" put it back together with what must have been an entire roll of scotch tape--good job. You really fooled me.

The book arrived in excellent condition exactly as described. I could not ask for more. The arrival of the book was timely for my class with no highlights or anything in the book. I was very, very pleased!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the most dense, hard-to-read, and impenetrable book I have ever read. I do not consider myself a math dunce; in fact, I am a math tutor and have taken courses as high as Calculus. However, the formulas and presentation of same in this book is nothing but laughable. Thankfully, our professor will not be testing us on any calculations. This book is way too detailed for its own good. The counselors and therapists studying this will not be helped in any way by the overwhelming minutia on how each assessment is formulated. That's what Statistics class is for.

The seller was very prompt in getting the book shipped I received it within a week and the book was in great shape