The main objective of an intelligence or achievement test is used to classify people in a particular category or to help us identify people that have a particular characteristic. In order to consider the test credible it has to meet three important requirements: validity, reliability and standardization. If it does not meet these characteristics, we cannot be sure to trust in the conclusions or results of the evaluation.
How do we make sure the test is reliable?
According to the textbook, reliability is the extent to which a test yields a consistent, reproducible measure of performance. I can define reliability in one word: consistency. The reliability of a test is based on the consistency …show more content…
The most used is the calculation of its reliability of application and re-application, which measures the correlation between the results of the same people in the same test, taken on two different occasions. For example, if a specific group of people take the SAT on two different occasions then the same people who obtained the highest results and the ones that obtained the lowest results the first time must have the same results again.
How do we make sure the test is valid?
The validity of a test, as the textbook states, refers to the extent to which a test measures what it is intended to measure. In other words, does the level measure what we are trying to measure. For example, in a test we are trying to measure the creativity of a person. The test will be only be valid if the results reflect the real creativity and not the skill that you have to draw or your mood. The validity of a test reflects the ability that it has to make accurate predictions about behavior or results with the purpose or design of the test.
One of the most common ways used to determine the validity of a test is the criterion validity. For example, if a test is designed to predict the success of the students in school, then the grades would be a good criterion to do so. If the test results have a high correlation with the student grades, then we can say that the test has criterion