This book provides brief but complete coverage of concepts, methods, and materials for selecting, designing, and using tests of achievement, aptitudes, and special abilities. Dr. Lewis R. Aiken provides step-by-step guidelines along with a set of computer programs for planning, constructing, administering, scoring, and evaluating tests in educational, clinical, business/industrial, and government/military settings. The coverage includes:
- Psychometric concepts and methods
- Test construction, administration, and scoring
- Standardized achievement tests
- Oral and performance achievement tests
- Tests of single and multiple aptitudes
- Tests of general mental ability
- Assessment of cognitive development and disorders.
Testing designed to measure cognitive abilities and performance, and the debate over the fairness, effectiveness, and proper use of that testing continue. Few professionals, however, would dispute the need for some form of standardized testing in education, industry, the military, and health-related fields. The controversy over the flaws, both alleged and recognized, of aptitude and achievement tests should serve not as a rallying cry for the elimination of these instruments but as a challenge to construct more accurate assessment tools and methods of administering and using them fairly and objectively. This book is designed to assist in that effort.
Tests and Examinations is the third volume in Lewis Aiken's popular series on psychometric assessment. Unlike its critically acclaimed predecessors—Rating Scales and Checklists and Questionnaires and Inventories, which are mainly devoted to the assessment of affective and social variables—the present volume focuses on the measurement of cognitive and psychomotor abilities. While Dr. Aiken provides ample coverage of the conceptual and theoretical foundations of psychological testing, in the main, the discussion is geared toward the design and application of all types of tests in a wide range of situations.
Clinicians, researchers, and students alike will appreciate the author's clear, step-by-step guidelines, pointers, and helpful hints on how to design, construct, administer, score, and evaluate tests of achievement, single and multiple aptitudes, intelligence, and cognitive development and disorders. Many rapid skill-building exercises are included at the ends of the chapters, and an enclosed computer diskette contains several dozen programs to provide experience in selecting, using, and evaluating tests.
A complete guide to designing and administering cognitive assessment instruments, Tests and Examinations is an important working resource for behavioral scientists, clinicians, personnel directors, and educators. It is also a valuable learning tool for students of psychology, sociology, health studies, and business.
