What is a psychological test?

Psychological tests are devices or procedures used to measure psychological variables.

Psychological tests are written, visual, or verbal evaluations administered to assess the
cognitive and emotional functioning of children and adults. A psychological test is one of
the sources of data used within the process of assessment.

Psychological tests are formalized measures of mental functioning. Most are objective
and quantifiable; however, certain projective tests may involve some level of subjective
interpretation. Also known as inventories, measurements, questionnaires, and scales,
psychological tests are administered in a variety of settings, including preschools,
primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, outpatient healthcare
settings, social agencies, prisons, and employment or human resource offices. They come
in a variety of formats, including written, verbal, and computer administered.

What is psychological testing?

Psychological testing is a field characterized by the use of samples of behavior in order to

infer generalizations about a given individual. The technical term for the science behind
psychological testing is psychometrics. By samples of behavior, one means observations
over time of an individual performing tasks that have usually been prescribed beforehand,
which often means scores on a test. These responses are often compiled into statistical
tables that allow the evaluator to compare the behavior of the individual being tested to
the responses of a norm group.

Psychological assessment is similar to psychological testing but usually involves a more

comprehensive assessment of the individual. Psychological assessment is a process that
involves the integration of information from multiple sources, such as tests of normal and
abnormal personality, tests of ability or intelligence, tests of interests or attitudes, as well
as information from personal interviews. Collateral information is also collected about
personal, occupational, or medical history, such as from records or from interviews with
parents, spouses, teachers, or previous therapists or physicians.

History of psychological testing

A primitive form of proficiency testing existed in China as early as 2200 B.C., where
some form of examination of public officials by the Chinese emperor was conducted
every third year. Civil service examinations began in China during the Chan dynasty in
1115 B.C. and ended in 1905 when a reform measure abolished the system. For 3000
years, the open and competitive exam in China provided for evaluation of proficiency in
areas such as archery, music, writing etc.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published a book on evolution of species. In this book he argued
that chance variation in species would be selected or rejected by nature according to
adaptivity and survival value. His writing, on individual differences kindled interest in
research on heredity in his half cousin, Francis Galton, who went on to become an
extremely influential contributor to the field of measurement. Galton aspired to classify
people according to their ‘natural gifts’ and to ascertain their deviation from the average.
He is also credited with the development of many contemporary tools of psychological
assessment including questionnaires, rating scales and self- report inventories. Although
Karl Pearson developed the product moment correlation technique, the roots can be
traced directly to the work of Galton.

Assessment was also an important activity at the first experimental psychology laboratory
in Leipzig, Germany, the founder of which was Wilhelm Wundt, a medical doctor. In
contrast to Galton, Wundt focused on questions relating to how people were similar, not
different. Individual differences were viewed as a frustrating source of error in
experimentation by Wundt.

The early 1900s witnessed the birth of the first formal tests of intelligence. Much of the
nineteenth century testing that could be described as psychological in nature involved the
measurement of sensory abilities, reaction time etc. The primary impetus for the
development of the major tests used today was the need for practical guidelines for
solving social problems. The person who had the vision of broadening testing to include
the measurement of cognitive abilities was Alfred Binet.

The first useful intelligence test was prepared in 1905 by the French psychologists Alfred
Binet and Théodore Simon. The two developed a 30-item scale to ensure that no child
could be denied instruction in the Paris school system without formal examination. In
1916 the American psychologist Lewis Terman produced the first Stanford Revision of
the Binet-Simon scale to provide comparison standards for Americans from age three to
adulthood. The test was further revised in 1937 and 1960, and today the Stanford-Binet
remains one of the most widely used intelligence tests. The Wechsler tests now extend
from the preschool through the adult age range and are at least as prominent as the
Stanford-Binet.

The need to classify soldiers during World War I resulted in the development of two
group intelligence tests—Army Alpha and Army Beta. To help detect soldiers who might
break down in combat, the American psychologist Robert Woodworth designed the
Personal Data Sheet, a forerunner of the modern personality inventory. The test was
introduced to develop a measure of adjustment and emotional stability that could be
administered quickly and efficiently to groups of recruits.

During World War II the need for improved methods of personnel selection led to the
expansion of large-scale programs involving multiple methods of personality assessment.
Following the war, training programs in clinical psychology were systematically
supported by U.S. government funding, to ensure availability of mental-health services to
returning war veterans. As part of these services, psychological testing flourished,
reaching an estimated several million Americans each year. Since the late 1960s
increased awareness has led to excessive use of the psychological tests. But there has also
been some amount of misuse of these tests. Hence there have been greater efforts in the
recent years to establish legal controls and more explicit safeguards against misuse of
testing materials.

Uses of psychological testing

In educational settings, intelligence and achievement tests are administered routinely to

assess individual accomplishment and to improve instruction and curriculum planning.
Elementary schools use kindergarten and first-grade screening procedures to determine
readiness for reading and writing programs. Screening tests also identify developmental,
visual, and auditory problems for which the child may need special assistance. If the
child's progress in school is unusually slow, or if he or she shows signs of a learning
disability or behavior disorder, testing may clarify whether the difficulty is neurologically
or emotionally based. Many high schools administer interest inventories and aptitude
tests to assist in the students' educational or vocational planning.

In clinics or hospitals, psychological tests may be administered for purposes of diagnosis

and treatment planning. Clinical tests can provide information about overall personality
functioning and the need for psychotherapy; testing also may focus on some specific
question, such as the presence or absence of organically based brain disorder. Clinical
testing usually involves a battery of tests, interpreted as a whole, to describe intellectual
and emotional states. Decisions about treatment do not depend exclusively on
psychological test results but are based on the judgment of relevant staff members with
whom the psychologist collaborates.

Tests are also used in industrial and organizational settings, primarily for selection and
classification. Selection procedures provide guidelines for accepting or rejecting
candidates for jobs. Classification procedures, which are more complex, aim to specify
the types of positions for which an individual seems best suited. Intelligence testing is
usually supplemented by methods devised expressly to meet the needs of the
organization.

Tests are also used in a wide variety of settings. For example, the courts rely on
psychological test data and related expert testimony as one source of information to help
answer important questions. Tests can also be used in the health psychology stream and
also in program evaluations- large scale or small scale.

Types of psychological tests

Currently, a wide range of testing procedures is used. Each type of procedure is designed
to carry out specific functions. In general, psychological tests fall into two broad
categories. There are those designed to assess personal qualities, such as personality,
beliefs, values, and interests, and to measure motivation or ‘drive’. These are known as
measures of typical performance. These are usually administered without a time limit and
the questions have no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers. The answers reflect how the person
taking the test would usually or typically feel, what they believe, or what they think about
things.

Second, there are those designed to measure performance. These are called tests of
ability, aptitude or attainment and are known as measures of maximum performance.
These tests are usually administered with a fixed time limit, and the questions in them do
have right and wrong answers. Some of these tests have very strict time limits, to ensure
that people cannot complete all the questions in the test in the time available. These tests
are designed to see how fast you can work. Usually their questions are not very difficult,
but you have to work fast to do well. Other types of maximum performance test have
more relaxed time limits, or may have no time limit at all. For these the questions may be
quite difficult, or sometimes start off easy and get progressively more difficult as you go
through the test. In these tests the emphasis is on how many questions you can get right,
rather than on how quickly you work. In most cases, tests fall somewhere in between
these two extremes. There will be a time limit, but this will be set to allow most people
sufficient time to get to the end of the test.

The important thing to remember is that when there is a time limit, it will be the same for
everybody. It is also important to remember that psychological tests of ability often seem
to be a lot ‘harder’ than the tests of knowledge people are used to from school. Typically,
if you had done your homework, you would expect to get 80 or 90 per cent of the
questions right in a school knowledge test. Psychological tests are designed so that on
average, people in the group they are intended for would get about 50 per cent right.

1. Tests under the measures of maximum performance:

Intelligence Quotient tests/Achievement tests

IQ tests or Intelligence quotient tests purport to be measures of intelligence,

while achievement tests are measures of the use and level of development of use of the
ability. Intelligence can be said to include the abilities to: acquire and apply knowledge,
reason logically, plan, infer, solve problems, make judgments, pay attention etc. IQ tests
and achievement tests are common norm-referenced tests. In these types of tests, a series
of tasks is presented to the person being evaluated, and the person's responses are graded
according to carefully prescribed guidelines. After the test is completed, the results can
be compiled and compared to the responses of a norm group, usually comprised of people
at the same age or grade level as the person being evaluated. IQ tests which contain a
series of tasks typically divide the tasks into verbal (relying on the use of language) and
performance, or non-verbal (relying on eye-hand types of tasks, or use of symbols or
objects). Achievement tests are designed to assess current performance in an academic
area. Because achievement is viewed as an indicator of previous learning, it is often used
to predict future academic success. An achievement test administered in a public school
setting would typically include separate measures of vocabulary, language skills and
reading comprehension, arithmetic computation and problem solving, science, and social
studies.
Examples of IQ tests would include WAIS-III, WISC-IV, Cattell Culture Fair III,
Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities-III, Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales V
and academic achievement tests would include WIAT, WRAT, Woodcock-Johnson Tests
of Achievement-III. These tests are designed to be administered to either an individual
(by a trained evaluator) or to a group of people (paper and pencil tests). The individually-
administered tests tend to be more comprehensive, more reliable, more valid and
generally to have better psychometric characteristics than group-administered tests.
However, individually-administered tests are more expensive to administer because of
the need for a trained administrator (psychologist, school psychologist,
or psychometrician) and because of the limitation of working with just one client at a
time.

Test scores are generally known as intelligence quotients, or IQs, although the various
tests are constructed quite differently. The Stanford-Binet is heavily weighted with items
involving verbal abilities; the Wechsler scales consist of two separate verbal and
performance subscales, each with its own IQ etc. There are also specialized infant
intelligence tests, tests that do not require the use of language, and tests that are designed
for group administration.

Aptitude Tests

These tests predict future performance in an area in which the individual is not currently
trained. Schools, businesses, and government agencies often use aptitude tests when
assigning individuals to specific positions. Vocational guidance counseling may involve
aptitude testing to help clarify individual career goals. If a person's score is similar to
scores of others already working in a given occupation, likelihood of success in that field
is predicted. Some aptitude tests cover a broad range of skills pertinent to many different
occupations. The General Aptitude Test Battery, for example, not only measures general
reasoning ability but also includes form perception, clerical perception, motor
coordination, and finger and manual dexterity. Other tests may focus on a single area,
such as art, engineering, or modern languages. The DAT or Differential Aptitude test is
another example of aptitude tests.

2. Tests under the measures of typical performance:

Interest Inventories

Self-report questionnaires on which the subject indicates personal preferences among

activities are called interest inventories. Interest inventories are designed to assess in a
systematic manner people’s likes and dislikes for different types of work or leisure
activity. Because interests may predict satisfaction with some area of employment or
education, these inventories are used primarily in guidance counseling. They are not
intended to predict success, but only to offer a framework for narrowing career
possibilities. Satisfaction at work requires not only possessing the necessary skills to do
the job competently but also having sufficient interest in it. Like tests of personality,
these are not tests in the sense of having right and wrong answers, and hence they are
very different from measures of maximum performance to be discussed later.

For example, one frequently used interest inventory, the Kudor Preference Record,
includes ten clusters of occupational interests: outdoors, mechanical, computational,
scientific, persuasive, artistic, literary, musical, social service, and clerical. For each item,
the subject indicates which of three activities is best or least liked. The total score
indicates the occupational clusters that include preferred activities.

Personality Tests

Personality assessment may be defined as the measurement and evaluation of

psychological traits, states, values, interests, attitude and/or related individual
characteristics. Personality inventories or questionnaires are good examples of tests that
assess preferred or typical ways of acting or thinking. Test items (or questions) of these
traits do not have right and wrong answers. Rather, they attempt to measure how much or
how little the test taker possess of a specified trait or set of traits (e.g. outgoingness,
flexibility, decisiveness) or abnormal phenomena such as anxiety and depression, etc.
Most instruments designed to measure or identify and assess dispositions are
administered without a time limit and stress the need for people to answer honestly and
openly. Psychological measures of personality are often described as either objective
tests or projective tests. Some projective tests are used less often today because they are
more time consuming to administer.

A) Objective tests (Rating scale)

Objective tests have a restricted response format, such as allowing

for true or false answers or rating using an ordinal scale. Prominent examples of objective
personality tests include the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Millon
Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III, Child Behavior Checklist etc. Objective personality
tests can be designed for use in business for potential employees, such as the NEO-PI, the
16PF, and the OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire), all of which are based on
the Big Five taxonomy. The Big Five, or Five Factor Model of normal personality, has
gained acceptance since the early 1990s when some influential meta-analyses (e.g.,
Barrick & Mount 1991) found consistent relationships between the Big Five personality
factors and important criterion variables. One of the most popular psychological tests is
the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), constructed to aid in
diagnosing psychiatric patients. Research has shown that the MMPI may also be used to
describe differences among normal personality types.

B) Projective tests (Free response measures)

Projective tests allow for a freer type of response. An example of this would be
the Rorschach test, in which a person states what each of ten ink blots might be. The
terms "objective test" and "projective test" have recently come under criticism in
the Journal of Personality Assessment. The more descriptive "rating scale or self-report
measures" and "free response measures" are suggested, rather than the terms "objective
tests" and "projective tests," respectively.

As improved sampling and statistical methods developed, much controversy regarding

the utility and validity of projective testing has occurred. The use of clinical judgment
rather than norms and statistics to evaluate people's characteristics has convinced many
that projectives are deficient and unreliable (results are too dissimilar each time a test is
given to the same person). However, many practitioners continue to rely on projective
testing, and some testing experts (e.g., Cohen, Anastasi) suggest that these measures can
be useful in developing therapeutic rapport. They may also be useful in creating
inferences to follow-up with other methods. Possibly they have lingered in usage because
they have a mystical and fascinating reputation, and are more attractive to uninformed
people than answering objective tests, e.g., true/false questionnaires. Another common
projective test is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which is often scored with
Westen's Social Cognition and Object Relations Scales and Phebe Cramer's Defense
Mechanisms Manual. Both "rating scale" and "free response" measures are used in
contemporary clinical practice, with a trend toward the former.

Characteristics of a good test

What is a ‘good’ test? Logically, it would include clear instructions for administration,
scoring and interpretation. It would also be important if a test offered economy in the
time it takes to administer, score and interpret it. Most of all, a good test would be one
that measures what it purports to measure. Along with all these, test users also mention a
few more characteristics important to have a ‘good’ test. They are:

1. Reliability
In everyday conversation, reliability is a synonym for dependability, trustworthiness and
consistency. In testing, it means consistency with reference to measurement. Reliability is
concerned with how accurate or precise a test score is. When a test is administered, the
outcome is an observed score on the quality measured by the test. However, all
measurement procedures physical as well as psychological are subject to some degree of
error. In order to know how much weight to place on the observed score, you need to
know how accurate the test is as a measuring device. Measures of test reliability allow us
to estimate that accuracy. This is a key characteristic of psychometric testing and what
makes it so much more valuable than other forms of measurement. For a psychometric
test, we can quantify the degree of accuracy of the scores we obtain. Being able to
quantify measurement error has important consequences for how we use tests. For
example, if you are carrying out an in-depth individual assessment of a person, on the
basis of which you will be making some important decision, then you need a high degree
of accuracy in your measurement. On the other hand if you are using a test to sort people
into one of two groups, and you are not concerned too much about making a few errors in
this process, then the reliability of the test can be less. In general, reliability can be
increased by making tests longer, and is decreased by shortening them. However, for a
given test length, reliability will depend a lot on how well the test has been designed and
developed. Reliability is one of the most important topics in training in test use.
Reliability is the extent to which a test is repeatable and yields consistent scores. A test
maybe reliable in one context and unreliable in another.

Types of reliability

There are a number of ways to ensure that a test is reliable. Some of them are:

• Test-retest reliability

The test-retest method of estimating a test's reliability involves administering the test to
the same group of people at least twice. Then the first set of scores is correlated with the
second set of scores. Correlations range between 0 (low reliability) and 1 (high
reliability). Test- retest reliability is an estimate of reliability obtained by correlating
pairs of scores from the same person on two different administrations of the same test. It
is appropriate to use when evaluating the reliability of a test that purports to measure
something that is relatively stable over time, such as a personality trait. If the
characteristic to be measured is likely to fluctuate over time, there would be little sense in
assessing the reliability of the test using the test retest method. The change might be due
to measurement error e.g. if you use a tape measure to measure a room on two different
days, any differences in the result is likely due to measurement error rather than a change
in the room size. However, if you measure children’s reading ability in February and the
again in June the change is likely due to changes in children’s reading ability.

• Alternate Forms

Alternate forms are simply different versions of a test that have been constructed so as to
be parallel. Although they don’t meet the requirements for the legitimate designation
‘parallel’, alternate forms of a test are typically designed to be equivalent with respect to
variables such as content and level of difficulty. It is basically to administer Test A to a
group and then administer Test B to same group. Correlation between the two scores is
the estimate of the test reliability. Developing alternate forms can be time consuming and
expensive but at the same time, it is advantageous. Once the tests are designed, it can be
used in several ways. This method also avoids the disadvantages of the test- retest
method to quite an extent.

2. Validity

In everyday language, we say something is valid if it is sound, meaningful or well

grounded on principles or evidence. In physical sciences, validity of measuring
instruments like scales is also found by comparison with a standard measure. In the
language of psychological testing, validity is a term used in conjunction with the
meaningfulness of a test score- what the test score truly means. Validity is concerned
with what the test score actually measures. It is insufficient to merely state that a test is a
measure of, say, mechanical aptitude, tolerance of stress, or proficiency in mathematics.
Statements like these must be supported by research that demonstrates a test score is a
meaningful measure of the quality or qualities the test was designed to assess.

Like reliability, the understanding the concept of validity is critical to competent test use.
A test is not simply either valid or not. Test manuals will contain reports of research
relating to various aspects of what the test is designed to measure. These studies will
never prove the tests validity, once and for all, because validity is contextual. A test can
be valid for one application but completely irrelevant for another. The studies reported in
the test manual should support the claims that are made about the tests and its use, and
provide the basis on which the test user can make inferences about people’s behaviour
and predictions about the future performance.

Validity is a subjective judgment made on the basis of experience and empirical

indicators. Validity asks "Is the test measuring what you think it’s measuring?" For
example, we might define "aggression" as an act intended to cause harm to another
person (a conceptual definition) but the operational definition might be seeing:

• How many times a child hits a doll

• How often a child pushes to the front of the queue
• How many physical scraps he/she gets into in the playground

In order to be valid, a test must be reliable; but reliability does not guarantee validity, i.e.
it is possible to have a highly reliable test which is meaningless (invalid).

Types of Validity

• Face validity
Face validity relates more to what a test appears to measure to the person being tested
than to what the test actually measures. It has something to do with the mere appearance.
It is a judgment concerning how relevant the test items appear to be. A test on
Mathematics should have numerical questions, a test on history should have questions on
wars, kings etc. If a test definitely appears to measure what it claims to measure, then the
test is high on ‘face validity’. Does the measure, on the face it, seem to measure what is
intended? Ultimately, face validity may be more a matter of public relations than
psychometric soundness.

• Content validity

Content validity describes a judgment of how adequately a test samples behaviour

representative of the universe of behaviour that the test was designed to sample. It is
based on a comparison of the analysis of test content with the analysis of the course
content and the instructional objectives. Such a test would contain items sampling from
hypothetical situations at home such as whether the respondent has difficulty making her
views known to family members; on the job i.e. if the respondent has difficulty in asking
subordinates to do what is required of them and in social situations such as whether the
respondent would send back a sizzler not done to order in a fancy restaurant. The analysis
is done through logical and rational processes which is why content validity is also
referred to as rational or logical validity.

• Construct validity

Construct Validity is the most important kind of validity. Construct validity is generally
determined by investigating what psychological traits or qualities a test measures; that is,
by demonstrating that certain patterns of human behavior account to some degree for
performance on the test. A test measuring the trait “need for achievement,” for instance,
might be shown to predict that high scorers work more independently, persist longer on
problem-solving tasks, and do better in competitive situations than low scorers. If a
measure has construct validity it measures what it purports to measure.
 • Criterion validity

Criterion related validity is a judgment of how adequately a test score can be used to infer
an individual’s most probable standing on some measure of interest- the measure of
interest being the criterion. There are no rules for what can constitute a criterion.
Whatever the criterion, ideally it is relevant, valid and uncontaminated. The criterion can
be a test scorer, behaviour, time, rating etc. Criterion validity consists of concurrent and
predictive validity. Concurrent validity is an index of the degree to which a test score is
related to some criterion measure obtained at the same time i.e. concurrently. Predictive
validity is an index of the degree to which a test score predicts some criterion measure.
For people, questions concerning the validity of a test are intimately tied to questions
concerning the fair use of tests and the issues of bias and fairness.

Test bias

In testing, bias is a factor inherent in a test that systematically prevents accurate, impartial
measurement. Systematic is a key word in the definition. Bias implies systematic
variation. Some tests have been found to be biased because of the design of the research
study rather than the design of the test. Prevention during test development is the best
cure for test bias.

Test fairness

In contrast to questions of test bias, which is more of a technically complex statistical

problem, test fairness tends to be rooted in issues involving values. Test fairness is the
extent to which a test is used in an impartial, just and equitable way. Fairness as applied
to tests is a difficult and complicated subject. Although a test is not inherently unfair, the
use of the test data can be unfair.

Relation between Reliability and Validity

Reliability is concerned with the stability of the test score and doesn’t go beyond the test.
Validity on the other hand implies evaluations in terms of an independent criterion. A test
to be reliable need not be valid but to be valid, it needs to be reliable. For e.g. a clock
which gains 20 minutes a day is reliable as it’ll repeat the same everyday. However,
judged against a standard time piece, the clock isn’t valid.

3. Norms

Norm referenced testing and assessment is a method of evaluation and a way of deriving
meaning from test scores by evaluating an individual test taker’s score and comparing it
to the scores of a group of test takers. In this approach, the meaning of an individual test
score is understood relative to other test scores on the same test. Norms for many tests are
expressed as percentile norms. Percentile norms are the raw data from a test’s
standardization sample converted to a percentile form i.e. it is an expression of the
percentage of people whose score on a test or measure falls below a particular raw score.

The general norms used are:

• Age norms

They indicate the average performance of different samples of test takers who were at
various ages at the time the test was administered.

• Grade norms

Designed to indicate the average test performance of test takers in a given test grade,
grade norms are developed by administering the test to representative samples of children
over a range of consecutive grade levels. Then the mean or median scores for children at
each grade level is computed. Grade norms don’t provide information as to the content or
type of items that a student could or could not answer correctly. It is used basically to
understand and gauge how one student’s performance compares to that of fellow student
in the same grade.

Ethics in psychological testing

Ethics are an essential part of the administration of psychological tests and it is necessary
that all test users follow the ethical guidelines when using any type of psychological test.
Psychological tests are an important tool in terms of many professions in an array of
settings such as in clinical psychology, education, and even business. However, misuse of
psychological test by the administrators is a constant and troubling issue that has the
potential to harm the individuals involved and even society as a whole.

For test takers, the misuse of a psychological test could result in improper diagnoses or
inappropriate decision making. The misuse of tests reflects very poorly on the
professional organizations along with highly trained test users and overall will result in
poor decisions that may harm society in both an economic and mental manner.

Usually test administrators do not intentionally misuse tests, but rather are not properly
informed as to the technical knowledge and overall testing procedure involved. In an
effort to prevent the misuse of psychological tests, psychologists developed a set of
professional and technical standards for the creation, evaluation, administration, scoring,
and interpretation of all psychological tests. Professionals can overcome the misuse of
tests simply by understanding the professional and technical standards that are involved
in using psychological tests.

In any situation in which a professional offers advice or intervenes in a person's personal

life in any way, issues regarding fairness, honesty, and conflict of interest are sure to
exist. The term ethics directly indicates any issues or practices that have the potential to
influence the decision making process that involves doing the right thing. Therefore,
ethics refers to the moral aspect of things in terms of what is right or wrong in regards to
various things such as an entire society, an organization, or a culture.

However, it is exceptionally difficult to achieve universal agreement when it comes to

ethics. For example, many psychologists disagree with each other in terms of the proper
way to interpret a client's right to privacy. Issues such as whether knowing a client may
be a danger to themselves and others should be protected from legal inquiry poses what is
known as an ethical dilemma. Ethical dilemmas are problems that will arise in which
there is no clear, direct, or agreed upon moral solution. While ethical standards are not
government appointed laws, violating ethical standards of an organization or profession
can have numerous and varied penalties as well which can include expulsion from the
organization. Testing is an essential part of the psychological network, and if used
improperly, can cause harm to individuals without their knowledge of it. Therefore, it is
necessary that we provide an ethical use of psychological tests for anyone who relies
upon them.

There are many issues of concern when it comes to ethics, one such issue being the right
to privacy and confidentiality. The concepts of individual rights and privacy are a
fundamental part of our society. The Ethical Principles affirm individual rights to privacy
and confidentiality as well as self-determination. The term confidentiality indicates that
individuals are guaranteed privacy in terms of all personal information that is disclosed
and that no information will then be disclosed without the individual's direct permission
which is usually required in writing. The results should be given directly to respondents
and are strictly confidential, including maintaining the privacy from employers.
Psychologists should protect data kept on file so that only those who have a right of
access can obtain them.

There are times however, that confidentiality is breached because managers, for example,
will seek out psychological information about their employees. Another example of
confidentiality being breached in a professional setting is when teachers may seek prior
test scores for students, however, with the good intention of understanding issues of
performance.

A term involved with an individual's right to privacy is known as anonymity. Anonymity

refers to the practice of obtaining information through the use of tests while concealing
the identity of the participant involved. Anonymous testing is more commonly used in
double-blind studies in which the researchers are completely unaware of the identity of
their participants. Some research suggests that anonymous testing may be a more valid
option in terms of accurate and truthful information about participants because
participants will be more likely to answer questions truthfully about themselves if their
identity is never revealed.

Another important issue is the right to informed consent. Self-determination is a right to

every individual which means that individuals are entitled to receive complete
explanations in regards to why exactly they are being tested as well as how the results of
the test will be used and what their results mean. These complete explanations are
commonly known as informed consent and should be conveyed in such a way that is
straight-forward and easy for examinees to understand. In situations involving minors or
those with limited cognitive abilities, informed consent needs to come from both the
examinee themselves as well as their parent or guardian.
However, parental permission should not be confused with informed consent.

Psychologists have a responsibility to ensure that the examinee as well as their parent or
guardian understand all implications and requirements that will be involved in a
psychological test before it is even administered. In addition to the issue of informed
consent, participants are also entitled to be prompted with an explanation, as non-
technical as it may be, of the test results. However, due to the fact that some test results
may influence the participant's self esteem as well as behavior, it is crucial that a trained
professional explain the results to the participant in a sensitive and understanding
manner.
The right to be informed of test findings is another one of the important ethical issues.
The Respondents should also be allowed to clarify their results. They should then be
provided a written description of their preferences. With sensitivity to the situation, the
test user will inform the test taker of the purpose of the test and will be available top
answer further questions test takers or their guardians have about the test scores. Ideally,
counseling resources will be available for those who react adversely to information that
has been presented.

Respondents should be informed of the nature of the test before taking it, and must
choose to take it voluntarily and should not be compelled to take it. Another issue that
involves ethics in terms of psychological tests is the right to protection from stigma or
the right to the least stigmatizing label. In conjunction with the participant's right to
know and understand their results, researchers need to be careful not to use any
stigmatizing labels when describing the results in terms of the participant. Researchers
need to refrain from using terms such as "feebleminded" and "addictive personality".
Therefore, the results that the test taker receives along with their parent or guardian in
cases involving minors should bring upon positive growth and development for the test
taker.

It is the duty of the psychologist to protect the integrity of the test by not coaching
individuals on actual test materials or other practice materials that might unfairly
influence their test performance. Ensuring that test techniques are not described publicly
in such a way that their usefulness is impaired is also important.