According to Carrington (1994), a test is a sample of responses, conduct, goods, or performances from a certain domain.
Similar to scales and inventories, tests are tools for evaluation (The New Standards for Psychological and Educational Testing, published in 1999).
A device used to collect a sample of a person’s behaviors. (Yun and Allen, 1979).
Test scores will forecast performance levels; when needed, the student will figure out how to put the pieces back together in relevant contexts. Cann, 2000).
Classification of tests:
These evaluation tools have been divided into several categories. You may classify people into the following two broad categories as a fundamental starting point:
a. What the person can accomplish (his talents); and
b. What the person will do (his distinctive behavior revealing his personality).
A few descriptive categories based on the instrument’s purpose or function are listed below.
a. Achievement tests:
Achievement tests, often referred to as proficiency exams, provide information on an individual’s knowledge base, level of accomplishment, and ability to solve issues and do tasks. These exams are designed to gauge a person’s current performance level and level of mastery in a subject or skill as a result of receiving training. These assessments gauge aptitude in a particular subject, such as maths, reading, spelling, or typing. Performance is measured in several areas by certain accomplishment batteries.
Achievement tests can be used, among other things, to determine a person’s strengths and weaknesses and to assess the impact of a course of study, teachers, and other educational resources. These tests can also be used to compare two teaching methods, courses of study, textbooks, etc., and to determine which groups are equivalent to serve as control and experimental groups. They can also be used to measure the progress made by the experimental and control groups by administering the test before and after the treatment.
b. Aptitude tests:
The purpose of aptitude tests is to evaluate an individual’s potential for success in a given academic or professional domain. Put differently, aptitude exams aim to forecast a person’s potential for achieving higher performance with further instruction. It was precisely because accomplishment tests were determined to be reliable indicators of academic performance that the earlier academic aptitude tests were developed. To determine a person’s potential for future growth given the required training, aptitude tests examine an individual’s current performance, including performance in certain areas where they have not received particular instruction. The mechanical, motor coordination, artistic, and aptitude for medicine, engineering, computers, languages, stenography, and other fields may all be measured with aptitude tests.
Scores on various talents are obtained via aptitude tests. These assessments give a thorough picture of a person’s general strengths and limitations or ability profile. After receiving the required training, this profile may be compared against the profiles of people who have succeeded in a variety of occupations to identify the field or fields in which he has the highest chance of success.
c. Personality tests:
A vast subset of psychological testing focuses on the non-cognitive facets of human activity. Most frequently, personality tests are used to examine these kinds of traits and viewpoints. The majority of these assessments are typically self-reporting tools. The person examines his answers to specific questions on his behavior patterns and preferred course of action in various scenarios. These instruments could not be very useful since it is hard, impossible, or unfeasible for people to precisely or impartially describe their own emotions. Two major categories may be used to group personality assessments.
i) Personality questionnaires:
In recent years self-report instruments have come to be used for personality assessment. One of the methods used in the construction of personality questionnaires is to make up a very large number of questions and then to determine by experimental studies which items discriminate between normal persons and groups of individuals known to deviate from the normal.
ii) Projective technique
In recent years, psychologists have focused a lot of emphasis on a novel method of personality assessment. The reason the new techniques are dubbed “projective” is that they allow subjects to project their traits onto how they would react to an ambiguous, hazy scenario. This method is predicated on the idea that, when a person is liberated from societal norms, he is more likely to be authentic and see the world in his unique light. The circumstances are deliberately left open-ended so that he is less able to falsify his sincere answers to appear favorable.
Read: Observation types and record-keeping methods
Reliability
If the same result is obtained from a test several times, it is considered reliable. The consistency of the respondents’ scores on subsequent tests is referred to as the test’s reliability. A test’s reliability may be assessed in three different ways.
(1) A large number of people may take a test, have it retaken, and then calculate the coefficient of correlation between the test and retest results.
(2) A large-scale test with many items may be given only once, but each participant may receive two scores—one for even-numbered things and another for odd-numbered items.
The reliability of the test might be determined by calculating the coefficient of correlation between these two scores. The test may be developed in many formats since prior familiarity with one form may render a retake unfair. To determine the reliability coefficient, subject scores on the two forms may be connected.
Validity
The validity of a test is determined by how well it truly measures the objectives it was designed to evaluate. There must be an independent standard for the characteristic being tested to establish test validity. For instance, the results of pupils’ most recent school exams in English might serve as criteria for certifying an English proficiency test. The results of a student’s first exam after starting college, which is a scholastic aptitude test, might also be utilized as the standard. Test validity is the degree of connection that exists between test results and criteria scores. In conclusion, the user should confirm for themselves before utilizing a test that:
The test is valid and sufficiently trustworthy, it has been standardized on a subject group similar to the one he intends to employ, it has been created to assess what he wants to measure, and it has high validity.
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