The Role Repertory Test(REP)

• An ideographic Technique for assessing cognitive variable.
• Devised by George Kelly to capture test-taker's construct system
• Assumes individuality, presumes each person builds a unique mental representation of the world. The goal is to understand the cognitive perspective of the person you are assessing. The tester is trying to understand the way the person views the world, to understand the subject's construction of the world.
• The test consists of three tasks
1. The test-taker provides names for people who played important roles in his/her life(Mom, Dad, best friend, someone who dislikes them, etc)
2. Groups of three names are presented. The test-taker must list an important way two are alike, but different from the third. Later, (s)he is asked to name the opposite of the feature the two share. This is how constructs are elicited. The process is repeated with 20 triadic comparisons.
3. Finally, each person in step #1 is rated using each construct elicited in step #2.

• The REP test tries to capture:
1. The ideas (constructs) the test-taker uses to represent his or her social world?
2. How are important social figures viewed in terms of those constructs?
3. The relationship between constructs (e.g., are lazy people irresponsible? Relaxed?)
4. How are the people related (who is like who? In which ways?)

• The REP was designed to facilitate research and cognitive therapy.

Neuropsychological Assessment

• Measures motor, perceptual, and cognitive abilities as related to status of the nervous system
• Batteries of tests are given to survey functioning, making guesses about brain pathology
• This approach is popular now, but strikes your instructor as a bit faddish.

The Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery

• detects performance deficits
• see Table 19-1, p. 514 for list of tasks

The Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery

• based on Luria's clinical experience, which he never standardized
• Golden, at the University of Nebraska, developed the battery of standard procedures. This one, like the previous, looks at very basic functions as cues to impairments.

California verbal Learning Test

• emphasizes how errors are made (specify how impairments are manifest)
• identify basic impairments that produce higher-order limitations

specialized batteries developed for particular assessments

• e.g., Masur's tests for early detection of Alzheimer's disease
• predicts risk for developing Alzheimer's within 4 years
• given to outwardly healthy adults
• separates into groups with 85% vs. 5% risk

• they do seem helpful in identifying deficits, with some treatment/management implications
• they are sensitive to brain damage and dysfunction, although relations between particular abilities and areas of the brain remain complex and poorly understood.

Quantifying Quality of Life in Medical Contexts

• Most of this work comes from attempts to measure a health-illness continuum
• Sickness Impact Profile
• widely used to measure consequences of many illnesses cross-culturally
• 12 categories, 136 items (see Table 19-3, p. 523)
• Index of Activities of Daily Living
• used to measure functional independence, need for assistance
• 6 categories rated for independence (see Table 19-4, p. 525)
• Karnofsky Performance Status
• often used in measuring impacts of cancer
• single 100 point rating, with descriptive anchors at each 10 (0=dead, 100=normal). It has never been published and it is unreliable, but good recent work on structuring observations have been taking its place.

Legal Dimensions of Testing

Testing plays important roles in the legal system

• guiding custody and sentencing decisions
• establishing legal competence, insanity, diminished capacity
• demonstrating injury, suffering

The legal system also has a growing impact on testing

EEOC, Adverse Impact, and the 4/5ths rule

Truth in Testing Laws

Ironically, the worst misuses of test is typically by well-intentioned insufficiently trained laymen. Overdisclosure may be more of a problem than the opposite.

Some Legal Milestones

• Hobson v. Hansen: Group ability tests cannot be used to track students because of adverse impact on minority children.
• Larry P.V. Wilson Riles: Judge labels IQ tests racially and culturally biased...not validated for purpose of consigning black children into educationally dead-end, isolated, stigmatizing classes. Prohibited individual IQ testing with black children.
• Parents in Action on Special Education v. Hannon: Similar situation to Larry P in Illinois; judge reaches opposite conclusion.
• Crawford et al, v. Honig et al. Crawford cannot get IQ testing of mulatto child, sues for equal protection. Larry P is reversed by original judge.
• Marshall v. Georgia: rejected the notion that tracking, and using test to do so, is bad for children even if it leads to statistical disparities in placements.
• Golden Rule Insurance et al v. Washburn et al: ETS agrees to remove all licensing items upon which blacks and whites differ by more than 15%.
• 1991 Civil Rights Act: It shall be unlawful employment practice...in connection with... employment or selection...to adjust scores, use different cutoff scores, or otherwise alter the results of employment related tests on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.