Response: Review several of your colleagues’ posts and respond to at least two of your peers, at least of one whom was assigned a different age group than you. You are encouraged to post your required replies earlier in the week to promote more meaningful interactive discourse in this discussion. Be sure to review the assigned articles before constructing your reply.

Which of the assessment instruments presented by your classmate demonstrates the strongest validity, and which (if any) do not show strong validity for the age group being discussed? Were there appropriate age, socioeconomic, language, and/or cultural considerations your classmate did not mention but should have been included in her or his initial post? What ethical consideration(s), in addition to those mentioned by your classmate, might you recommend be included? Provide a rationale for the inclusion of these considerations. Use information from the required resources as well as any other appropriate peer-reviewed articles to support your statements.

1st Response Hodges

F through J: Children ages 8 through 16

For your initial post, you will present at least two viewpoints debating professional approaches to assessment used in psychology for your assigned age group. Please see the list below for your assigned age group. In addition to the required reading, research a minimum of one peer-reviewed article from the Ashford University Library on ability testing research at is pertains to your assigned age group.

In your initial post, you must

• Briefly compare and discuss at least two theories of intelligence and the contemporary assessment measures related to those theories.

Robert Sternberg Triarchic theory and Gardner Multiple Intelligence theory are my choices for comparison. Sternberg theorized intelligence as mental activity, i.e. problem solving; situational competence; and adaptation. Contemporarily, Sternberg’s theory would be utilized in the realm of creativity. Assessments may be conducted within the setting of an educational venue. For instance, analytical, creative, and thinking skills assessments would be administered to students. Gardner theorized intelligence by visuals, verbal, logic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and musical. Gardner did not standardize the assessments. MI assessment show strengths in particular topic. Gardner theorizes everyone has all of the intelligence factors for different areas, but, are stronger in some.

• Analyze challenges related to assessing individuals in your assigned age group and describe any special ethical and sociocultural issues which must be considered.

Possible challenges associated with assessing at the age of 7-16 could be the differences in outcome. Of course the assessments would be geared towards age related material. There should be no ethical considerations with either of these types of assessments, other than school official guidelines. So often there are standards for school districts in different states. For these types of assessments, the ethics portion would fall upon the school districts. “Reports from the US Census Bureau indicate one fourth of children presently in kindergarten public schools are Hispanic, and by the year 2023, ethnic minority will become majority.” (Harrison, 2012, p. 526) Sociocultural, is a different case. There are many school districts which have eliminated musical and artistic classes. Others have capitalized upon it. There is a world renowned art college in the city I live. The creative and artistic flourish.

• Analyze and provide evidence from validation studies supporting and opposing the use of specific instruments with your assigned population.

KABC-II measures processing of abilities. It was created for children ages 3-18. It is broken down into 5 categories including, learning, memory, simultaneous, planning, and knowledge.

NEPSY-II is intended to give clinicians assistance with proficiency levels in children ages 3-16. It helps with identifying cognitive functioning currently, and future functioning.

Both of these instruments are used worldwide, and are revisions from originals.

• Present the pros and cons of individual versus group assessment of ability.

“Whatever their application, group tests differ from individual tests in five ways:

Multiple-choice versus open-ended format; Objective machine scoring versus examiner scoring; Group versus individualized administration; Applications in screening versus remedial planning; Huge versus merely large standardization samples.”(Gregory, 2014.ch.6.1)

Depending on what is being assessed would determine the pros and cons. Seeing as the topic here is assessment of ability, which I would categorize as intelligence, the following would be the major components of the pros and cons.

Pro- Group assessments can save time, whereas, individual assessments require, for instance, 20 minutes with one child vs. 20 minutes with 15 children. Group testing is more economical.

Con- Grouping children and giving one standard assessment could cause a “loss of interest” for the child. Not all children have the same interests, and therefore, group assessments are not individualized. Individualized testing allows for the administer of the test to be aware of whether or not the child truly understands what they are supposed to do.

• Summarize the implications of labelling and mislabeling individuals in your assigned age group as a result of testing and assessment.

If a child is labeled as not having high enough scores on assessments, or the alternative, having too low of scores, the child or the adolescent can be misplaced. For instance, a child who may not score in the percentile (normal, average, etc.) of a standardized group assessment range, may be placed in a learning disability forum. Or, if a child scores on the opposite range, they may be placed in another format of learning above their comprehension, or even outside of their social skill set. If the cultural norm is different, there could be mislabeling as well. Our text quotes cultural penalization. “Persons from backgrounds other than the culture in which the test was developed will always be penalized.”(Gregory, 2014.ch.6.7) The section goes on to discuss, female v. male, social class, and African American.

Gregory, R. J. (2014). Psychological testing: History, principles, and applications (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Harrison, D. P. (2012). Contemporary Intellectual Assessment, Third Edition: Theories, Tests, and Issues. New York, NY: Guilford Publications, Inc.

2nd Response Shabanah

Discussion Week Two:

• Briefly compare and discuss at least two theories of intelligence and the contemporary assessment measures related to those theories.

The age group I have been assigned is adults ages 61 and older. There are at least two theories of intelligence that we can view that do relate with this age group of humans. Two terms we can use to define this group is the elderly or “older adults”. We can view two of these relatable theories in sections 5.7 as well as 5.20 in our text (Gregory, 2014).

The structure of intellect model can be used for a number of various age groups and older adults is one of these groups. This model is found in section 5.7 of our text. There are three dimensions in this test. This test was first conceived by a psychologist named J. P. Guilford. This was around the time of World War II. One unique fact about this test is that this test was designed to even try to reach beyond old methods and try to also incorporate testing the creative areas of the brain and psyche. His model for this test is called the structure of intellect model, or SOI model. Guilford’s test is broken up in to three dimensions, or parts. These are labeled: operations, contents, and products (Gregory, 2014).

The second test is called KAUFMAN BRIEF INTELLIGENCE TEST-2 (KBIT-2). This can be found in section 5.20 in our text. This test is for ages 4-90. The designer and originator of this test is named Alan Kaufman. The KBIT-2’s average testing time required is 20 minutes. There are both verbal and non- verbal parts. The standard deviation is 15. The standard score mean is 100 (Gregory, 2014).

There are a number of places that administering this test would be normal to do so. One of these is in an adult treatment facility or institution. The KBIT-2 is recognized as being a great asset to test with among certain populations, such as the elderly. It is noted as having great value as a screening measure of general intelligence in a number of settings including research (Gregory, 2014).

• Analyze challenges related to assessing individuals in your assigned age group and describe any special ethical and sociocultural issues that must be considered.

There can be some challenges when working with this segment of the population. An issue that it is reported that with in this population, is that there are more mental disorders. This could be because at this age, a person has been through much more in life in comparison to a twenty year old. At this age, for example, this person could have to dealt with emotionally, a divorce or two, the death of loved ones, and infirmity. One can say, well at twenty a person can deal with the same. However, the point being, is that at these other ages (61 and older) there is just more of this in a person’s life. This can have a direct impact on how this person is doing, psychologically speaking. One disorder, for example, that is prevalent with in this population is depression.

Another challenge is that given the ages in this population, when working with the elderly in general, it only makes sense to know that there can be more individuals in this age group that can have some kind of medical impairment (Gregory, 2014). There are a number of diseases and other medical impairments that are more seen in an older population. One of these is Alzheimer’s (Tadic, Wuthrich, Rapee, 2015).

This is important and relevant to be aware of when working with this age range of people. For example if one is scheduled to take the IQ test on a certain day that he is also feeling more sick than usual, this can affect the overall outcome of the test. Perhaps a solution for this type of problem would be to reschedule the test for this person, to a date that he is more likely to not be feeling his worst (Nguyen, Chatters, Taylor, Mouzon, 2016).

For ethical and socio cultural issues, yes there are some to consider especially with in this age range. In chapter 6 we can view group tests and some issues that may come up during this. One socio cultural issue that may come up is that in some countries, the family is very protective over the elders in their family. This includes China as well as the Middle East.

It is possible, that because of this, there can be a family member (or more than one) who would have a problem with this elder taking a test such as this in the first place. They may not have an understanding or even trust of “psychology” in general. This may be due to a lack of education of overall feeling and understanding of psychology practice in relation to that are of the world, with the lay people or common people who have no further than a high school education. If this does arise, I would suggest, sitting those family members down and kindly and compassionately explaining to them that no harm will come to their loved one. In fact, it is quite the opposite and that he/ she will probably benefit from knowing the outcome in the end.

The ethical issue in relation to this is to sign the consent form and have all rights read to the party that is to sign this form. If it would help, I would definitely suggest this session with their family members in order to calm their fears and explain to them what this test is and what it is not. In the end, after this explaining and calming their fears, it is more likely that they will “allow” their family elder to then sign the required document.

• Analyze and provide evidence from validation studies supporting and opposing the use of specific instruments with your assigned population.

One specific instrument with Guilford’s SOI model, is including the category of creative thinking. Guilford viewed factors of intellect. With in his test, there are about 150 that are tested (Gregory, 2014).

One of KBIT-2’s specific instruments is using verbal knowledge and riddles (Gregory, 2014). In relation to this population, this should go well as long as they have no dramatic or severe medical or otherwise handicap. For the ones who are still of sound body and mind (very much) this should be something they should be able to do well with.

We can view one validation study that researched using the SOI model. From this study’s assessment, we can see that one asset they mentioned to using this type of model with this population is that SOI models can also used to test behavior related to drug therapies (Perreault et al, 2015). They found this model to be especially useful for this testing.

One downfall to the KBIT-2 model in relation to older people according to another article is that with KBIT-2 model, that it is possible to either underestimate or overestimate a score. A tester must be aware of this error possibility. Some KBIT scores scored roughly 5 points higher than their scores with another test testing for the very same thing. (Merrill et al, 2013).

• Present the pros and cons of individual versus group assessment of ability.

There are both pros and cons to group testing. The other option is individual testing. One pro of group testing is that we can take a rather large sample size, test on this, and acquire data on this. This kind of data can be useful to a number of groups and organizations, and even applied to further testing (Gregory, 2014). One group whom uses this type of data is the government.

One con of group testing is actually the same as one pro of individual testing, which is: in some regards, individual testing can be more accurate to a specific individual. This kind of testing is best used in a setting where gathering data on an individual is more necessary than getting data in a mass sense. One example of where this should be used in doing testing in relation to trying to a psychologist testing in order to eventually diagnose a patient (Gregory, 2014).

• Summarize the implications of labeling and mislabeling individuals in your assigned age group as a result of testing and assessment.

There is absolutely an implication that occurs when a tester has mislabeled any individual in an assigned age group. The implication is that a sample population is used for a reason. This is not only relative to the current test that is being done. It is also relevant to the next tests that will be done in relation to this topic, that will also use some of the data you have come up with, in order to add to their own test. When you mislabel in the first place, this will surely yield that some of your data is faulty and incorrect. It has also been shown that labeling when labeling should not be used, will have a negative consequence. One of these is over-diagnosis of disabling conditions (Gregory, 2014).

References:

Bart, William M.; Hokanson, Brad; Can, Iclal. (2017, April). Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice. An Investigation of the Factor Structure of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Volume 17. Issue 2. Pp 515- 528. Ashford University On Line Library.

Gregory, R. J. (2014). Psychological testing: History, principles, and applications (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Harrison, D. P. (2012). Contemporary Intellectual Assessment, Third Edition: Theories, Tests, and Issues.New York, NY: Guilford Publications, Inc.

Merrill, Edward C.; Conners, Frances A.; Roskos, Beverly; Klinger, Mark R.; Klinger, Laura Grofer. (2013, July/ August). Journal of Genetic Psychology. Contextual Cueing Effects Across the Lifespan. Volume 174. Issue 4. Pp 387- 402. Ashford University On Line Library. Ashford University On Line Library.

Nguyen, Ann; Chatters, Linda; Taylor, Robert; Mouzon, Dawne. (2016, June). Happiness Studies. Social Support from Family and Friends and Subjective Well- Being of Older African Americans. Volume 17. Issue 3. Pp 959- 979. Ashford University On Line Library.

Perreault, Michel; Julien, Dominic; White, Noe Djawn; Rabouin, Daniel; Lauzon, Pierre; Milton, Diana. (2015, January). Substance Use & Misuse. Psychological Predictors of Retention in a Low Threshold Methadone Maintenance Treatment for Opioid Addicts: A 1 Year Follow Up Study. Volume 50. Issue 1. Pp 24- 31. Ashford University On Line Library.

Tadic, Dusanka; Wuthrich, Viviana; Rapee, Ronald. (2015, August). Cognitive Therapy & Research. Age Differences in Interpretation Bias in Community and Comorbid Depressed and Anxious Samples. Volume 39. Issue 4. Pp 459- 472. Ashford University On Line Library.

 

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