Product Description

A proven classic in the field, this edition of Psychological Testing and Assessment features new co-author Gary Groth-Marnat. Building on Aiken's strong foundation, this edition has been thoroughly updated, offering extensive coverage of new tests, inventories, and scales, the methods used in constructing these psychometric instruments, and the application of them. Greater integration of chapters, enhanced student activities, more opportunities to increase depth through web-based resources, new editions of various tests, greater emphasis on applied aspects of assessment, and revisions in the content and format of college entrance examinations drive Aiken and Groth-Marnat's twelfth edition. Substantial attention has also been given to neuropsychological assessment, adaptive testing, item response theory, the use of computers in psychological testing, and applications of tests in various contexts. This is an essential text for any student who is planning to construct, administer, and make decisions based on psychological tests in clinical, educational, or vocational settings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #535845 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 552 pages

From the Back Cover
With this thoroughly revised twelfth edition, Psychological Testing and Assessment builds on its reputation as the premier text in the field. Lewis Aiken and new co-author Gary Groth-Marnat, a renowned lecturer, practitioner, and researcher, provide extensive coverage of tests used in clinical, organizational, forensic, and educational settings. This comprehensive text includes information on test construction, test application, neuropsychological assessment, the new format for the college entrance exams, adaptive testing, item response theory, and the use of computers in psychological testing. The authors incorporate case studies and experiential activities throughout, encouraging students to think critically about the material in a real-world framework. Greater clarity and expansion of pedagogical features have been made including references to web-based resources, clear chapter objectives, chapter summaries, and review questions. Learning is further enhanced through a companion website that includes practice tests, annotated listing of websites, and guidelines for understanding and evaluating psychological reports. With its well-integrated material and cutting-edge content, Psychological Testing and Assessment is an essential text for students planning to evaluate, administer, interpret, construct, or make decisions based on psychological tests.

Customer Reviews

Aiken's book as a teaching text
Aiken's "Psychological Testing and Assessment" (11th ed.) is a well-organized and well-written work. Having used it to teach two undergraduate courses to date, I would have the following comments.

Aiken makes a few somewhat stereotypical assumptions in regard to certain aspects of assessments, particularly in regard to socioeconomic status and, less often, gender. He also tended to gloss over some rather important subjects such as Central Limit Theorem, which could have enjoyed a little more attention even though it is assumed that readers have completed at least basic statistics.

Altogether, however, the book is a very good choice for university level...either undergraduate or graduate...teaching of the principles and practice of testing and assessment.

IQ testing for the faint-hearted
Written 1996

There is doubtless a need for stolidly professional books about IQ-testing. Many trainees for psychology careers and research assistantships need to know how to test IQ even though they would rather spend their time bemoaning psychometrics and its latent ideologies of measurability and inequality. For apprehensive newcomers to the assessment of intelligence, Aiken's book is the near-perfect answer. It sets forth the nuts and bolts of standardized testing plainly, sensibly and in a way that is unlikely to upset anyone. Aiken provides three general chapters on history, concepts and procedures, seven Buros-style chapters on published tests, and concludes with three chapters touching on explanatory issues and the main obstacles to acceptance of IQ-testing. Everything that the trainee tester could want is here -- including a reminder to provide special desks for left-handers, and an intriguing specimen Parental Consent Form (in use by the Los Angeles Unified School District) offering the assurance that NO STANDARDIZED INTELLIGENCE (I.Q.) TESTS WILL BE GIVEN.

The 'balance' favoured by textbook writers is well maintained throughout. Every significant move towards assertion is rapidly followed by a disclaimer or denial. The Kaufman Ability Scales are commended, but their relative equalization of blacks and whites is admitted to depend on the inclusion of a larger-than-usual number of 'memory' subtests. The possible effect of birth order on IQ makes an interesting story; but it is acknowledged that recent research suggests some kind of failure of researchers to control adequately for later-borns necessarily coming from larger families. Likewise, though Howard Gardner supposedly "draws on developmental research findings to demonstrate the independence of [his] seven intelligences", readers are told twelve lines later that "his ideas are based more on reasoning and intuition than on the results of empirical research studies." Aiken probably favours London School claims; but he allows himself to go no further than pointing out difficulties with disunitarian and social-environmentalist viewpoints.

The other textbookish way of maintaining mock-scholarly detachment is simply to avoid key questions altogether. Aiken opts for this too. Despite a generous page allocation, he has little to say about whether IQ tests are fair, whether they are strongly correlated with 'basic processes', whether their variance is largely heritable, or whether what they test is critical to modern life outcomes. To answer any of these four questions requires some presentation of the techniques of psychometrics, factor analysis, inspection time and psychogenetics; but Aiken is happier to give these techniques a miss. He does not show how to check for fairness -- let alone does he rehearse actual empirical endorsements (e.g. Braden's (1994) demonstration of the tests' fairness with grossly culturally deprived deaf children). Aiken gives the conventional three-page 'outline' of factor analysis but does not actually show how factors are extracted, so he can claim exemption from discussing the percentages of variance explained by the g factor in contrast with specifics. Like most American researchers, he has apparently never heard of research on inspection time; he plumps for a heritability of .50 without saying whether this is NARROW or BROAD or indicating what such calculation involves; he declines to mention, let alone contest James Flynn's arguments for the unimportance of IQ; and, though his text has been revised to squeeze in a reference to Herrnstein and Murray (1994), Aiken makes virtually no use of their sociology-crushing results. All told, Aiken's heart is probably in the right place; but he evidently believes that the way to deal with hysterical political correctness about IQ is 'softly-softly'.

Thankfully there are relatively few outright mistakes -- though Aiken should have learned that his wish to 'update' the 1947 Raven's Matrices has been granted. Also, the British National Foundation for Educational Research has a UK address as well as one in Singapore; and the biblical selection of crack soldiers who scooped up water 'putting their hands to their mouth' (Judges vii 3-7, King James' 1611 Version) (rather than kneeling down and drinking face-into-the-water) would indeed have sorted out those men who took wise precautions against surprise attack. Trainees will also be glad that Aiken's chapters are accompanied by redundancy-increasing Summaries and by 'Questions and Activities' that will assist preparation for the now conventional examination of trainees' rote learning abilities in today's universities.

REFERENCES:
BRADEN, J. P. (1994). Deafness, Deprivation and IQ. New York : Plenum.
HERRNSTEIN, R. & MURRAY, C. (1994). The Bell Curve. New York : The Free Press.

Possibly the worst textbook ever
This is the most dense, hard-to-read, and impenetrable book I have ever read. I do not consider myself a math dunce; in fact, I am a math tutor and have taken courses as high as Calculus. However, the formulas and presentation of same in this book is nothing but laughable. Thankfully, our professor will not be testing us on any calculations. This book is way too detailed for its own good. The counselors and therapists studying this will not be helped in any way by the overwhelming minutia on how each assessment is formulated. That's what Statistics class is for.