APY4010

Psychology - advanced psychological assessment and classification

Mr David Goble

One 3-hour seminar and one 1-hour lecture per week
* First semester
* Caulfield

Objectives On the completion of this subject students should have the ability to select appropriate psychological tests or procedures to achieve specified purposes; to use assessment procedures with a minimum of supervision from a fully qualified psychologist, to administer, score and interpret three major intelligence tests. Students will be able to select, administer and interpret educational, ability, personality and projective tests and will acquire basic interview skills.

Synopsis Testing and assessment theory and practice. The theoretical rationale of assessment procedures and tests. Reliability, validity and validation procedures. Critical review and evaluation of tests and of underlying assumptions. Development of skills for the administration, interpretation, and reporting of tests and test results. Intelligence, ability and achievement tests; personality tests; diagnostic and vocational assessment procedures. Behavioural assessment procedures: introduction to behavioural assessment theory and methods; relevance to clinical application. Classification systems: objectives and types of classification systems; psychometric, organisational and other factors affecting classification decisions. Organisational and individual decision making.

Assessment Case study paper: 50%
* Measurement topic paper: 50%

Prescribed texts

Anastasi A and Urbina S Psychological testing 7th edn, Prentice-Hall, 1997