Tests

TESTS (from English test-experiment), a term used primarily in our country in psychology, psychotechnology, pedology, psychiatry, and pedagogy to denote experimental tests for establishing psychological characteristics of a person, the level of knowledge and skills in a particular field, the degree of fatigue and performance, etc. If we do not consider individual attempts to construct such tests undertaken in ancient times (particularly in China), then the beginning of the development and application of tests under the influence of the needs of psychology, psychiatry, and pediatrics should be attributed to the 1890s. Every test consists of a series of tasks presented to the subject under specific conditions (content of preliminary instructions, testing time, preliminary exercises, etc.), usually precisely specified in the instructions to the T. Verification and evaluation of the results of work are carried out on the basis of a certain "key" or scoring scheme and by comparing the subject's indicators with "norms" or "standards" established by testing a corresponding, sufficiently large group of persons. By technique of administration, one can distinguish: T. paper-and-pencil (answers are written or marked by the subject on forms where the corresponding tasks are printed), non-paper-and-pencil (tasks are given orally or demonstrated on posters, answers are marked by the subject on special "answer" forms) and apparatus tests (work on machines and devices is required), individual and group tests, with or without time limits (so-called T. on "exhaustion"), T. with choice from ready-made answers ("elective") and T. with direct answer ("inventive"), in which the construction of the answer is left to the subject. There is currently no generally accepted psychological classification of T., but in practice one usually distinguishes: T. of so-called "general intelligence", T. of constructive-technical thinking (these usually include tests of spatial imagination and combination, planar and volumetric, ability to understand the principle of operation of a mechanism, assemble a mechanism, detect and eliminate malfunctions, etc.), T. of memory, attention and motor skills. Separately stand T. for establishing the level of knowledge and skills, usually called T. of "success", T. of "achievements" or "school" T. There are also poorly developed attempts to construct T. for establishing characterological features, direction of interests, etc. Examples of T. on general intelligence can be: tests of Ebbinghaus on filling in missing words in a story or in individual phrases; T. of "analogies" - one needs to find a fourth word that relates to the third as the second relates to the first; T. of "instructions" (carrying out instructions given in the text); T. of "classification" or "extrawords" - cross out from five words the word that does not have a common feature with the other four (example: copper, iron, pine, gold, lead; one needs to cross out pine), etc. For those who cannot read (younger children, illiterate and semi-literate adults, and mentally retarded), as well as to exclude the influence of language on the test result, so-called "nonverbal" or "mute" T. on "general intelligence" (tasks are given in the form of pictures or figures) or T. of "action" or "manipulative" are used. Examples of mute T. for early age levels (from 2½ to 7 years) can be certain tests of Alice Decedre ("lotto"): the subject must place separate cards with pictures on corresponding similar pictures on a general table; T. of "sequence of events", in which one needs to arrange in the proper order pictures depicting sequential events or actions, etc. To "action" T. on intelligence (classified by some authors as so-called "practical intelligence") belongs, for example, the Bogen test for children (so-called "cage"), consisting in the fact that the subject, using four rods of different shapes, must pass a ball located inside the cage through certain openings and bring it out. To T. of constructive-technical thinking belong tests of Rybakov (make a cut on a given figure so that the resulting parts can be assembled into a square), "ruler" of Friedrich (select from drawn pieces of ruler those needed to fill the slots in this ruler), T. of "mechanisms" (answer questions regarding the operation of a mechanism depicted in a drawing, etc.). To T. of attention belong: tests of Bourdon (crossing out certain letters or figures in a text), tests of Schulze and Krepedin (adding numbers), tests of MacCree (tracing winding lines), etc. Tests of attention are often also used to establish a decrease in performance under the influence of fatigue. Apparatus T. are constructed either to reveal individual psychological properties (eye measurement, memory, attention) or a certain complex of these properties or strive to reproduce during testing of professional suitability the setting of professional work (so-called "model" T., used, for example, for testing drivers, tram operators, locomotive engineers, etc.). The latter T. in a number of cases are poorly suitable for testing the abilities of candidates for a given profession, since special production skills have a significant influence on solving these T. The indicator for a paper-and-pencil test is usually the number of correctly solved problems, most often evaluated by the alternative method (see), converted into points according to a certain scheme, often according to the five-point system of Rupp-Kettell; according to this scheme, a certain, sufficiently large group of subjects is divided in order of increasing indicator into 10, 20, 40, 20 and 10 percent of the total number (the "worst" 10% receive a score of 1, the next 20% receive a score of 2, etc.), and a table for converting test indicators into points is established, which is used in further practical work. The analysis of the subject's errors and observation of him during the solution of T. (especially apparatus) may also be of essential significance. In so-called "work samples" (Arbeitsprobe), the center of gravity is transferred to these observations and sometimes no indicator is established at all. At present, tests are widely used in the USSR for the purposes of professional consultation and professional selection to establish the abilities of subjects when studying fatigue and the workday regime, as an auxiliary method in establishing a psychiatric diagnosis, etc. The application of tests is carried out through a network of professional consultation bureaus of the VTsSPS and NKZdr., special laboratories for railway and local transport, psychotechnical departments of scientific institutes, pedological offices of schools FZU, FZS and FZD, psychophysiological laboratories in enterprises, etc. The use of T. for distribution by professions and specializations is based on taking into account the comparative significance of the corresponding psychological property for a certain group of professions, between which differentiation is made. At the same time, the complex use of a number of test indicators, taken not only in their interconnection but also in their relationship to other data about the subject (physical development and health, direction of interests, socio-domestic conditions, etc.), is of essential significance. The greatest prevalence in professional-consultation work in the USSR (in 1933-34) was enjoyed by the following test methods: the so-called "unified" method (I-2 and KT-2), developed by a number of scientific research institutions under the general guidance of the central laboratory for professional consultation of the All-Union Institute of Organization and Labor Hygiene, the method of the professional-consultation laboratory at the Leningrad Institute of Organization and Labor Hygiene, and the method of the Institute named after Obukh (Moscow). The application of T., besides establishing the abilities and skills of subjects, also opens wide possibilities in regard to rationalizing all kinds of impact measures (organization of training, lectures, etc. adapted to the characteristics of a given group, individualization of training based on taking into account the characteristics of a given person, accounting for the effectiveness of the work done, etc.). Besides using test data for the correct choice of the program and methods of impact T., with their appropriate reconstruction, can also be used as one of the methods of training and developing skills and psychological properties (so-called "training" or "educational" tests). At present in the USSR there are already a number of successful attempts to use T. for educational purposes. It should be noted that the uncritical borrowing of methods developed by researchers of bourgeois countries and the corresponding theories led to the emergence of a number of errors of mechanistic and idealistic order in the application of T. in the USSR. In particular, the underestimation of the influence on test indicators of the level of education, social environment, etc. led to the fact that a number of Soviet psychotechnicians considered test indicators as direct reflections of the innate "giftedness" of subjects, which, being one of the manifestations of the system of idealistic errors, found its reflection in the practical work of professional selection (see).

The opposite error was the mechanistic reduction of all test differences to environmental influences and the underestimation of the significance of the biological factor, which is closely related to the manifestation of 'leftist' deviations in school work. In reality, however, recognizing the inseparable unity of the social and biological 'factor' in any psychological act, we can at the same time, for certain conditions of comparison of test indicators with each other, attribute the observed differences either primarily to the influence of the environment or to abilities. For example, the difference in average scores on verbal Tests of 'general intelligence' between children of workers and employees, or the difference in average scores on Tests of technical thinking between boys and girls, should be attributed to differences in preliminary training and the influence of home conditions, whereas differences between two examinees with the same education and social-living conditions equally favorable for the development of the properties reflected by the Tests can, with even greater right, be attributed to differences in natural abilities, the closer these conditions are to each other. The overestimation of the significance of Tests and the possible areas of their application also led to completely improper and harmful attempts to use Tests to determine the political orientations of examinees (the so-called method of 'conflicts'), in which the examinee was asked to mark the correctness of statements from a series of formulations, most of which were either inaccurate in content or represented reflections of the fabrications of a slanderous nature by class-hostile elements. The methodology for constructing Tests appears to be quite complex and requires the construction on the basis of preliminary professional and other studies of so-called 'experimental forms' of Tests, the establishment of the psychology, nature, difficulty, and differentiating value of individual tasks included in the Tests, as well as the establishment of the 'reliability' of Tests, i.e., the degree of stability of test indicators when conducting an 'equivalent' form of the Test, and the diagnostic and prognostic suitability of Tests. By prognostic suitability of Tests in the field of professional selection is meant the degree of coincidence of test indicators with the 'criterion', in particular with assessments of work performance established after a certain period following the test examinations. When establishing the diagnostic suitability of Tests, the criterion and test indicators relate to the same time. Experience in conducting checks has shown that there is indeed sufficient coincidence for practical purposes between test indicators and data on further success (theoretical and practical). It should be noted, however, that these data on prognostic suitability can be considered sufficiently justified only in those cases when a so-called differential analysis was conducted, which allows to determine to what extent the discovered relationship depends on the influence of other factors acting simultaneously on both the Tests and further success.