Psychometric Measure

A Psychometric Measure is a human measure used to assess psychological constructs such as personality traits, cognitive abilities, attitudes, or behaviors through standardized procedures.

• Context:
  • It can (typically) be proposed by a Psychometrics Researcher in the field of Psychometrics.
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  • It can range from being a Unidimensional Psychometric Measure to being a Multidimensional Psychometric Measure.
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  • It can be used in Clinical Psychology for diagnostic assessment and treatment planning.
  • It can be applied in Educational Psychology to evaluate learning outcomes and cognitive development.
  • It can support Personnel Selection processes in Organizational Psychology.
  • It can be designed to minimize Response Bias through various question formats and administration methods.
  • It can undergo Psychometric Validation to establish its measurement properties.
  • It can be analyzed using Factor Analysis to uncover underlying construct dimensions.
  • It can be subject to Cultural Adaptation for use across different linguistic and cultural contexts.
  • It can be administered in Paper-and-Pencil Format or through Computerized Adaptive Testing.
  • It can be evaluated for Measurement Invariance across different populations or time points.
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• Example(s):
  • Emotional State Measures, such as:
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  • Personality Measures, such as:
    • a Big Five Inventory that measures the five major personality dimensions.
    • a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory for evaluating personality and psychopathology.
    • a 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire assessing 16 primary personality traits.
  • Intelligence and Cognitive Measures, such as:
    • a Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale for assessing various aspects of cognitive functioning.
    • a Raven's Progressive Matrices measuring abstract reasoning and fluid intelligence.
    • a Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales evaluating five cognitive abilities.
  • Clinical and Mental Health Measures, such as:
    • a Beck Depression Inventory used to measure the severity of depression symptoms.
    • a State-Trait Anxiety Inventory assessing anxiety levels in clinical and research settings.
    • an Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule for diagnosing autism spectrum disorders.
  • Religiosity and Spirituality Measures, such as:
    • a Religiosity Measure.
    • a Spiritual Well-Being Scale assessing religious and existential well-being.
  • Occupational and Organizational Measures, such as:
    • a Job Satisfaction Survey measuring employee attitudes towards various aspects of work.
    • an Organizational Commitment Questionnaire assessing employee commitment to their organization.
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  • Bravado Measures for displays of confidence, assertiveness, or boldness.
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• Counter-Example(s):
  • Physiological Measures, which assess bodily functions rather than psychological constructs.
  • Behavioral Observation Techniques, which rely on direct observation rather than standardized testing.
  • Projective Techniques, which are less structured and standardized than typical psychometric measures.
  • a Physiological Test, such as a blood test.
  • an Educational Test.
• See: Aptitude, Personality, Personality Measure, Test Construction, Psychological Assessment, Psychometrics, Scale Development, Measurement Error, Test-Retest Reliability

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References

2015

• (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_testing Retrieved:2015-6-25.
  • Psychological testing refers to the administration of psychological tests. A psychological test is "an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behavior" (p. 4). The term sample of behavior refers to an individual's performance on tasks that have usually been prescribed beforehand. The samples of behavior that make up a paper-and-pencil test, the most common type of test, are a series of items. Performance on these items produce a test score. A score on a well-constructed test is believed to reflect a psychological construct such as achievement in a school subject, cognitive ability, aptitude, emotional functioning, personality, etc. Differences in test scores are thought to reflect individual differences in the construct the test is supposed to measure. The technical term for the science behind psychological testing is psychometrics.

2013

• (Kosinski et al., 2013) ⇒ Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, and Thore Graepel. (2013). “Private Traits and Attributes Are Predictable from Digital Records of Human Behavior.” In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(15).
  • QUOTE: We show that easily accessible digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender. The analysis presented is based on a dataset of over 58,000 volunteers who provided their Facebook Likes, detailed demographic profiles, and the results of several psychometric tests. The proposed model uses dimensionality reduction for preprocessing the Likes data, which are then entered into logistic/linear regression to [[predict individual psychodemographic profiles from Likes. The model correctly discriminates between homosexual and heterosexual men in 88% of cases, African Americans and Caucasian Americans in 95% of cases, and between Democrat and Republican in 85% of cases. For the personality trait “Openness," prediction accuracy is close to the test-retest accuracy of a standard personality test. We give examples of associations between attributes and Likes and discuss implication]]s for online personalization and privacy.

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