Psychological Tests: Uses and Abuses
By A. Anastasi. 1961
A common misuse of psychological tests arises from the confusion of measurement with etiology. No test can eliminate causality. Nor can a test score, however derived, reveal the origin of the behavior it reflects. If certain environmental factors influence behavior, they will also influence those samples of behavior covered by tests. When we use tests to compare different groups, the only question the tests can answer directly is: "How do these groups differ under existing cultural conditions?" This limitation of tests may appear so obvious as to be trite. But it needs to be made explicit, because it is still frequently forgotten in discussing the implications of test results.
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- R. Linn
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- W. Harlen
- Melissa Roderick
- Gavin T. L. Brown
- John A. Ross
Citations in the corpus
- Fair Test Use in Selection1 (1973, background): “For example, it is basic in the conceptualizations that may be found in Anastasi (1968), Guion (1966), Bartlett & O'Leary (1969), Einhorn & Bass (1971), and Linn & Werts (1971).”