Steps in Developing a Psychological Assessment Measure

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When developing a psychological measure, there are many issues that are important to consider in order to ensure the assessment measure is successful. In this essay, the process that should be followed when developing a psychological assessment measure will be discussed, including how items should be chosen for the test, evaluating the reliability and validity of the test and the issue of establishing norms. One of the first important issues to address is the issue of norms relating to the psychological measure. According to Foxcroft and Roodt (2001, p. 58), “a norm is a measurement against which the individual’s raw score is evaluated so that the individual’s position relative to that of the normative sample can be determined.” There are a number of ways to determine test norms. For the purpose of this essay, only developmental scales, percentiles, standard scores and deviation IQ will be discussed. Mental age scores and grade equivalents are two of the developmental scales used to determine norms. When using mental age scores, a basal age is first calculated (Foxcroft & Roodt, 2001). The basal age is the “highest age at and below which a measure was passed” (Foxcroft & Roodt, 2001, p. 58). In order to determine a child’s mental age, the basal age of the child is added to any extra months of credit the child earned at a higher age level (Foxcroft & Roodt, 2001). “The development of a child with a mental age of ten years corresponds to the mental development of the average ten year old child, no matter what his or her chronological age is” (Foxcroft & Roodt, 2001, p. 58). Grade equivalents are often used in a school setting. A pupil’s achievement can be compared to other children in the same grade. This kind of developmental scaled is used especially for expressing performance on standardized scholastic measures (Foxcroft & Roodt, 2001). A percentile

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