PSY 352 CORE MAIN EXAMS ALL SET QUESTIONS
AND ANSWERS SURE A+
✔✔weaknesses of test data - ✔✔Participants might try to guess what trait is being
measured and then alter their behavior to create certain impressions
Difficult to know if participants define testing situation as intended by experimenter
Researcher might influence how participants behave
✔✔mechanical recording devices of test data - ✔✔Actometer: used to access children's
activities
Strengths:
Not hampered by biases of human observer
May be used in naturalistic settings
Disadvantage:
Few personality dispositions lend themselves to mechanical assessment
✔✔physiological testing of test data - ✔✔Includes information about a person's level of
arousal, reactivity to stimuli—potential indicators of personality
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
advantage:
Key benefit is that it is difficult to fake responses
Disadvantages
Often used in artificial laboratory setting
, Accuracy of recording hinges on whether participant perceives situation as
experimenter intended
✔✔projective techniques of test data - ✔✔Person presented with ambiguous stimuli and
asked to describe what she sees; assumption is that person "projects" personality onto
ambiguous stimuli
Strengths: May provide useful means for gathering information about wishes, desires,
fantasies that a person is not aware of and could not report
Disadvantages: Difficult to score, uncertain validity, and reliability
✔✔Life outcome data - ✔✔information that can be gleaned from the events, activities,
and outcomes in a person's life that are available to public scrutiny
✔✔strengths of life outcome data - ✔✔can serve as an important source of "real life"
information about personality
often use s-data and o-data to predict l-data
✔✔weakness of life outcome data - ✔✔life outcomes are caused by a variety of factors,
including one's sex, race, and ethnicity and opportunities one is exposed to
personality is only one set of causes
✔✔reliability - ✔✔consistent results from a measure
internal reliability
test-retest reliability
inter-rater reliability
✔✔internal reliability - ✔✔all questions should measure same things (answers
correlated)
✔✔test-retest reliability - ✔✔taking test at different times produces roughly same result
✔✔inter-rater reliability - ✔✔consistent measures from multiple observers
✔✔valid - ✔✔test measures what it claims to measure
face validity
predicative validity
convergent validity
discriminant validity
✔✔face validity - ✔✔seems like it addresses the subject
✔✔predicative validity - ✔✔results predict other criteria external to the test
✔✔convergent validity - ✔✔type of predicative validity
test correlates well with other measures that it should correlate with
AND ANSWERS SURE A+
✔✔weaknesses of test data - ✔✔Participants might try to guess what trait is being
measured and then alter their behavior to create certain impressions
Difficult to know if participants define testing situation as intended by experimenter
Researcher might influence how participants behave
✔✔mechanical recording devices of test data - ✔✔Actometer: used to access children's
activities
Strengths:
Not hampered by biases of human observer
May be used in naturalistic settings
Disadvantage:
Few personality dispositions lend themselves to mechanical assessment
✔✔physiological testing of test data - ✔✔Includes information about a person's level of
arousal, reactivity to stimuli—potential indicators of personality
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
advantage:
Key benefit is that it is difficult to fake responses
Disadvantages
Often used in artificial laboratory setting
, Accuracy of recording hinges on whether participant perceives situation as
experimenter intended
✔✔projective techniques of test data - ✔✔Person presented with ambiguous stimuli and
asked to describe what she sees; assumption is that person "projects" personality onto
ambiguous stimuli
Strengths: May provide useful means for gathering information about wishes, desires,
fantasies that a person is not aware of and could not report
Disadvantages: Difficult to score, uncertain validity, and reliability
✔✔Life outcome data - ✔✔information that can be gleaned from the events, activities,
and outcomes in a person's life that are available to public scrutiny
✔✔strengths of life outcome data - ✔✔can serve as an important source of "real life"
information about personality
often use s-data and o-data to predict l-data
✔✔weakness of life outcome data - ✔✔life outcomes are caused by a variety of factors,
including one's sex, race, and ethnicity and opportunities one is exposed to
personality is only one set of causes
✔✔reliability - ✔✔consistent results from a measure
internal reliability
test-retest reliability
inter-rater reliability
✔✔internal reliability - ✔✔all questions should measure same things (answers
correlated)
✔✔test-retest reliability - ✔✔taking test at different times produces roughly same result
✔✔inter-rater reliability - ✔✔consistent measures from multiple observers
✔✔valid - ✔✔test measures what it claims to measure
face validity
predicative validity
convergent validity
discriminant validity
✔✔face validity - ✔✔seems like it addresses the subject
✔✔predicative validity - ✔✔results predict other criteria external to the test
✔✔convergent validity - ✔✔type of predicative validity
test correlates well with other measures that it should correlate with
