Abstract
This chapter discusses the major psychometric and measurement issues involved in evaluating and using psychological tests. These issues include normal and skewed distributions; the use of norm-referenced scores such as T-scores; the use of factor analysis in measurement development; and different forms of reliability and validity. Although these topics are commonly referenced in empirical research on measurement development and individual differences, they deserve attention in clinical practice as well. To this end, the chapter closes with a brief discussion of utility as it applies to the selection and implementation of psychological tests in clinical assessment.
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Notes
- 1.
When orthogonal (independent or uncorrelated) rotation techniques are used (and these techniques are very frequently used in test validation research), the factor loading represents the correlation between the subtest and a factor. This is not the case when oblique or correlated methods of factor analysis are used (Furr, 2018).
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Frick, P.J., Barry, C.T., Kamphaus, R.W. (2020). Measurement Issues. In: Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35695-8_2
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