Psychological Testing and Assessment (Indian Adaptation) by Cohen Swerdlik and Kumthekar

About the book

Psychological Testing and Assessment: An Introduction to Tests and Measurementis the standard-setting text that through seven editions has overviewed measurement in psychology with unrivaled depth, breadth, and clarity. Logically organized and lucidly written, this book acquaints readers with important historical, legal, ethical, and cultural issues, and then proceeds to provide readers with the information necessary to understand psychometric concepts such as reliability, validity, and utility. Through writing that effectively anchors abstract concepts to real-life applications--and through the use of innovative teaching tools such as "Just Think" questions and the "Everyday Psychometrics" features in the text--readers will come away with a well-rounded, working knowledge of psychometrics and the assessment enterprise in a contemporary, real world context.

About the Indian Adaptation

During the first decade of the 21st Century, many new books on Psychological Testing have come into the market. Most of them are American or European editions and many of these have been available in the Indian or Asian markets in the form of Low Price Editions (LPE). However, the cultural issues specific to the Asian countries are seldom dealt with in these titles. The Indian students have to understand the concepts with the help of illustrations, cases and situations in their cultural context.

The motive behind the adaptation at hand is to provide the Indian students with a contextually relevant text on the subject. For years together the students have been instructed to read and consider situations and studies put forth by foreign editions. Many psychological studies and researches have been conducted in India and other Asian countries of which the students are often not aware. This substantiates the need for an Indian edition which should contain Indian illustrations, situations and case studies to provide meaningful images to be associated with the concepts being discussed. In the present edition, some photos and illustrations have been replaced by typical Indian situations, e.g. Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak as an example of a multifarious personality, study of administration of European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Questionnaire (EORTCQ) on Indian patients, example of sale of Alto cars instead of profit gained in a hotel-chain etc.

A wealth of useful information in the wide array of topics is a special feature of this book. Keeping in line with it, the Indian adaptation too provides information on the latest edition of Annual Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY) by Oscar Buros. The inclusion of information about QLQ-related study conducted in Mumbai (Dr. Chaukar et al) supports the authors’ objective to incorporate timely and relevant illustrations.

Psychological Testing and Assessment, 7/e by Cohen and Swerdlik has a sound grounding in legal/ethical issues. But the Indian students are unaware of the legislation in India. Though this is not a textbook in law, a student of psychology needs to be aware of the basic legal requirements while selecting a test and while administering the test to the client. In this Indian edition, an attempt has been made to bring to their notice some significant legislation in India like the Mental Health Act, 1987, the PWD (Equal opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) and the National Policy released in 2006. In future the youngsters of today may take concrete steps in improving the legalities in the area of psychological testing. They may emphasize and establish the importance of testing, the test reports submitted by the professional psychologists in the field of judiciary.

Psychological Testing and Assessment, 7/e also has a sound grounding in psychometrics. The third chapter entitled as “A Statistics Refresher” has devoted to “refreshing” basic statistical knowledge. In the present edition a separate chapter on Norms is presented purposefully to emphasize importance of Norms vis-à-vis other psychometric properties of tests such as Reliability, Validity, etc. In chapter 4 “Of Tests and Testing”, basic information regarding the meaning of psychological test has been added for better understanding and clarification for the students.

Many noteworthy contributions of the authors are seen in chapters 5 through 9. “Utility”, “utility analysis”, the use of “Item Response Theory” (IRT) are definitely new to Indian students. They will hopefully get well-acquainted with such new terminologies and the concepts. Chapter 9, “Test Development” deals with developing and constructing tests. Part of this chapter deals with writing different types of items. In the section on writing matching-type test items, readers are challenged to match actor’s name with the name of the character that he/she played in a popular movie. Names of Indian actors and their respective roles in movies have been given in this section of the Indian edition.

Three chapters on the assessment of intelligence deal more generally with ability assessment in the schools. It is worth noting that appreciable amount of work has been done in this India in this area. The adaptor personally lauds the efforts and genuineness of researchers and is optimistic about the future of Indian research scenario.

In chapter 13, while taking overview of personality assessment, the authors have provided updated material on new versions of personality tests, such as the California Psychological Inventory and there is extensive discussion on the recently revised MMPI-2, now referred to as the MMPI-2 Restructured Form or MMPI-2-RF (published in 2008).

Chapter 14 “Personality Assessment Methods” contains a lot of new material that students and their teachers may find both interesting and informative. Again in this area, the works of Indian researchers is commendable. The Indian psychologists have been working hard not only in the field of intelligence and personality but also in the field of clinical and counseling assessment, careers and business assessment and neuropsychology. Although the amount of work done in some of these areas is minimal, they are undoubtedly of genuine quality.

Salient Features

• Most acclaimed and advanced text examining the philosophical, historical, and methodological foundations of psychological testing, assessment, and measurement.

• Comprehensive coverage of the following topics: Assumptions about Psychological Testing and Assessment; Important Historical, Legal, Ethical, and Cultural Issues; Psychometric Concepts such as Norms, Reliability, Validity, and Utility; Test Construction, Item Analysis; Recent and latest Tests of Intelligence, Personality, and Neuropsychological Assessment.

• Logically organized and lucidly written; innovative and informative boxes titled “Meet an Assessment Professional”, “Close-Up” featured throughout.

• Abstract concepts to real-life applications explained through the use of innovative teaching tools such as “Just Think” questions and the “Everyday Psychometrics”.

•  Updated data on Indian researches and studies, adaptations of tests and assessment techniques, etc.

Table of Contents

Preface

Preface to the Indian Edition

Acknowledgements

1. Psychological Testing and Assessment

2. Historical, Cultural, and Legal/Ethical Considerations

3. A Statistics Refresher

4. Of Tests and Testing

5. Norms

6. Reliability

7. Validity

8. Utility

9. Test Development

10. Intelligence and Its Measurement

11. Tests of Intelligence

12. Preschool and Educational Assessment

13. Personality Assessment: An Overview

14. Personality Assessment Methods

15. Clinical and Counseling Assessment

16. Neuropsychological Assessment

17. Assessment, Careers, Business and

Index

About the authors

Mark E. Swerdlik, Ph.D., ABPP, is Professor of Psychology at Illinois State University, where he has taught the undergraduate psychological measurement course, conducted professional seminars addressing legal/ethical issues in assessment, and supervised practicum students in assessment. In various professional capacities, he has participated in the standardization of many psychological tests, including, for example, the WISC-R, the WISC-III, the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), the Stanford-Binet IV, the Peabody Picture  Vocabulary Test (PPVT), the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale, the Psychological Processing Checklist (PPC), and the Psychological Processing Checklist-Revised (PPC-R).

Ronald Jay Cohen, Ph.D., ABPP, is a Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology in Clinical Psychology, and a Diplomate of the American Board of Assessment Psychology (ABAP). He is a New York State licensed psychologist, and a “scientist-practitioner” and “scholar-professional” in the finest traditions of each of those terms.

Dr. Medha M. Kumthekar (the Indian adaptor) is Professor and former Head, Department of Psychology, S.N.D.T. Women’s University, Pune. She has a rich experience of 30 years of teaching psychology at junior college to postgraduate level. Dr Kumthekar has taught postgraduate students of Clinical and Counseling Psychology for more than 20 years and Psychodiagnostics for more than a decade. She has completed two research projects based on the adaptation of renowned Intelligence and Personality Tests. Her depth and insight in the application of various tests and interpreting their results made her an expert teacher in the field of testing as well as methodology. As a practicing psychologist and counselor, she has been using many psychological tests at the professional level, and has conducted professional workshops on administration of various tests. Dr. Kumthekar administers and interprets psychological tests, and conducts seminars to train fellow professionals in proper test administration, scoring, and interpreting the tests in clinical, counseling and school-related contexts.