Psychological Testing: Principles, Applications and Issues, 8th Edition.
Robert
M. Kaplan & Dennis P. Saccuzzo
Wadsworth:
Belmont, California, 2013, 639 pp, $189.95
ISBN-10:
1-133-49201-0 / ISBN-13: 978-1-133-49201-6
Robert M. Kaplan,
Ph.D., Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences at the National
Institutes of Health, and Dennis P. Saccuzzo, Professor Emeritus at San Diego
State University and Adjunct Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law,
present the 8th edition of their textbook, Psychological Testing: Principles, Applications, & Issues. This
textbook provides the theoretical underpinnings of psychological test
assessment.
Each chapter is laid
out with learning objectives followed by a brief history of the subject, early
theories on the subject, modern theories, examples of how to apply to modern
research, issues relating to psychological testing, suggestions for how to
correct error, and finishing off with a brief summary of the chapter - sometimes
with a small section of practice questions. Chapters 1 to 3 review the basic
statistics needed to understand test outputs, chapters 4 and 5 deal with
reliability and validity, respectively, and the remaining 16 chapters explore test
construction, test administration, ethical issues and applications of
psychological testing.
Kaplan and
Saccuzzo are thoughtful in their attempts to explain complex concepts, for
example “reliability of a difference score”, describing each term in the
formula, working through at least one example of the formula in use, and
briefly summarizing the concept in simple language. There is an apparent
awareness of how dense and abstract the material discussed is, demonstrated by
the authors’ inclusions of multiple examples, summaries, and tables which further
reduce the topic to the basic underlying principles. Examples are relevant to university
students with repeated references to Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) and
their validity in predicting graduate student success. By using examples which
the readers can relate, the concepts behind those examples become much more salient.
An understanding
of reliability and validity is crucial when dealing with tests. Kaplan and
Saccuzzo’s chapter on validity logically progresses from describing face
validity, a superficial appearance of the items relatedness to the purpose of
the test, to criterion- related validity, and ending with construct validity,
which “many psychologists now believe…is the only major type of validity that
need concern us.” (p.153).
Chapters 11 to 20
examine psychological assessments and their applications across a variety of
professions and settings. Psychological tests are conducted in education,
military, counseling, clinical, industrial/business, health care and forensic
settings to measure intelligence, personality, aptitude, mental status and
quality of life. All forms of tests are created and evaluated based on
principles of reliability and validity, making this textbook applicable to a
broad range of health professionals (e.g., psychiatric nurses, occupational
therapists) who administer psychological inventories across the world.
This textbook is an
especially valuable resource for graduate students and prospective health
professionals interested in conducting and understanding psychological
assessments. The diverse backgrounds of the Kaplan and Saccuzzo are a testament
to the wide variety of settings which psychological assessments can be utilized
in. The explanations are thorough, the structure of the text is well organized,
examples are easy to understand, and the applications of testing beyond the
discipline of psychology are clear. The result is a textbook which is intently
focused on the readers and their comprehension of the material.
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