AP Psych - Testing and Individual Differences

Standardization sample

A representative group of people who take a standardized test and establish the norms.

Standardized test

A test that has been piloted on a similar population of people as those who are meant to take the test; individuals are compared against the norms of the sample population.

Predictive validity

A type of criterion validity that acts as a measure of future performance.

Concurrent validity

A type of criterion validity that measures how much of a characteristic a person has now.

Psychometricians

Individuals who have specialized professional training in administering, scoring, and interpreting the results of personality tests and other techniques of psychological assessment.

Stanford-Binet IQ test

Intelligence test based on the measure developed by Binet and Simon, adapted by Lewis Terman of Stanford University.

Norms

Standard of comparison for test results developed by giving the test to large, well-defined groups of people.

Achievement tests

Test that measure what one has learned or accomplished.

Group tests

Tests administered to a large amount of people at a time; interaction between the examiner and test takers is minimal.

Individual tests

Tests administered to a single person at a time; interaction between the examiner and examinee is great.

Power tests

Tests that consist of items of increasing difficulty in order to gauge the difficulty level of problems an individual can solve.

Speed tests

Tests that generally consist of a large number of questions asked in a short period of time to determine how quickly a person can solve problems.

Aptitude tests

Tests that measure ability or potential.

Flynn effect

The rise in average IQ scores that has occurred over the decades.