The Standardized Testing - Essay Example

Issues like combat stress will be more prevalent and may bring a need for new depression scales to be developed specifically for this issue.
Another area that will see challenges will be employment. As more people are laid off and need to go back to school to find different careers, I think testing will play a bigger part in understanding the skills, abilities, likes, and dislikes of the individual. I also think that there will be more psychological testing for potential new employees, and the workplace will become more challenging for some. As an example, an article in the New York Times (2007) reported on a series of letters they received from workers about personality tests they had taken for job interviews. One person questioned how they "failed" a personality test. The article pointed out that some companies use these tests to pigeonhole employees according to the narrow type they are looking for in a particular job. This stops the business from gaining a larger employment pool. I think more people will protest the use of personality tests in employment as time goes on.

I believe that the information learned in this class will help me to discern various challenges for an organization where I may work. I will have an understanding of any tests I may have to take and/or use in the organization. I would want to make sure that any test that we were using was used for the right reasons. If I worked for education, the knowledge would help me explain testing information to parents and help them to find ways to help their child excel despite the tests.

Assignment 3
As a scholar-practitioner, it is important to understand the tools that one is working with regularly. The information learned in this class will help me to develop a battery of tests that can benefit my clients. I would want to provide the most opportunity for clients to be successful.
There are ethical issues that may need to be addressed by the scholar-practitioner. As an example, Wright and Wright (2008) suggested that certain types of tests may be inappropriate for certain groups. Their examples were the cognitive ability tests because they did not measure the cognitive ability for all ethnicities across the board. We learned in class about validity and reliability and as Phillips (1992) pointed out, reliability measures depend on what is being measured and how it is measured. Although these tests measured cognitive functioning for Asians and whites, they did not score well for African Americans and Hispanics (Wright and Wright, 2008). This to me would mean that the test was not valid for all populations which would create an ethical problem if the tests were used across the board -- a scholar-practitioner would need to discern how best to tackle this issue with their organization.
The information about individual group tests was useful because a scholar-practitioner must understand the difference between the two and how they are given. Gregory (1996) states that individual tests are easier to monitor and they take a shorter time to administer. This information will help the scholar-practitioner deliver tests more effectively. Read More