E-411 PRMA

Objective Methods

objective methods - items that can be scored "objectively"

Multiple-choice, true-false, matching

Number endorsed may represent strength of trait

Intricately tied to theoretical slant and reporter's honesty

Number endorsed may represent strength of trait

What might be some practical and psychometric benefits of this approach?

Projective Methods

What did you see in that toast?

What, if anything, does it say about you?

We put our own meaning into toast consistent with our personality (projective hypothesis)

Projective methods - judgments and inferences about our personality based on how we view the toast

Any unstructured stimulus could be used (e.g. words, pictures, drawings)

Indirectly soliciting information from a responder

What might this be?

What did you see and how did you see that? (inquiry)

May ask additional questions for clarification and to further understand the response

Scored based on loction, determinants, content, popularity, and form

What might be some measurement concerns?

Thematic appreception test

• Pictures elicit fantasy material from testtakers
• Testtakers asked to provide information about what led up to the picture, what is happening in the picture, and what will happen next
• What are thinking? Feeling?
• Discover the source of the story
• Relate this to testtakers personality

Word association and sentence completion

Word association - testtakers responds to a stimulus word with the first word that comes to mind

Response and time to response are noted

Sentence completion - testtaker completes a setence or phrase

Sounds and pictures

Early, though largely unused, attempts to elicit response to sound

Several figure drawing tests exists where testtakers are instructed to draw a picture

Various (unusual?) attributes of the picture are analyzed

Like the other methods, these are psychometric soundness questionable

What do you think about the psychometric soundness of these methods?

Behavioral assessment

Focus on behaviors

• Alternative prespective is to focus on behavior not on unobservable trait
• Make inferences about what a testtaker does and has done
• More psychometrically sound?

Why do a behavioral assessment?

• Provide behavioral baseline data to compare other behavioral data to later
• Examine testtakers behavioral responses to different conditions
• Understand environment cues that trigger behavior
• To modify behavior and create treatments

How do we do this?

Behavioral observations and rating scales

Self-monitoring (reactivity?)

Analogue studies and situtational performance

analgoue study - investigate related variables to the variable of actual interest

How might we access fear of falling using an analogue study? And how can we be sure that this being effective?

examine how people perform under particular situtations

What might be some situations we would want to investigate?

Role Playing

Pscyhophysiological methods

What might be the measurement issue here?