Psychological Testing and Assessment Selection Paper Research

Psychological Testing and Assessment Selection - Research Paper Example An expectancy table provides an indication or prediction of the possibility that the scores of a person taking test will lie within interval on the measuring criterion that qualify categorization as failing, passing or acceptable. For instance, an expectancy table applied in experimental test on personnel in an employment setting may show that the higher the score of a worker on a new test is a prelude that the worker may be gain approval as successful. Commonly used expectancy tables include Naylor-Shine tables and Taylor-Russell tables (Cohen, Swerdlik & Sturman, 2013). Decision theory and test utility are another combination or resources that can help a counselor select a psychological test or assessment. Decision theory provides guidelines for setting cutoff point for particular scores recorded from tests. Another tool that counselors can use in selecting a psychological test or assessment is the Brogden-Cronbach-Glaser formula (Ployhart & MacKenzie, 2011). This is mostly useful in calculating the amount of dollar of utility retrievable from the use of particular instrument selected under a given condition. A counselor selecting a psychological test for a client needs to consider the four issues that include difficult-index of an item, reliability and validity indices of items and discrimination index. To determine an item’s difficulty index, one has to calculate the proportion of the number of test takers that answered an item in correct way. Usually, a lower case â€Å"p† helps in denoting item difficulty with subscript to show an item’s number. Cohen, Swerdlik and Sturman (2013) educate that the value of item index can range from zero incase everyone failed the item and one incase everyone passed the item. The larger the item difficulty index, the easier is the item, and the smaller the item difficulty index, the tougher the item. Easier items scored by all people and difficult items failed by all test takers are inappropriate