Introduction
Over time, quite a number of personality traits all individuals possess have been identified by psychologists. The observable differences amongst individuals are informed by differing personality characteristics combinations. Some psychological tests are tailored to chart differences in personality among individuals considered to be normal while others concern themselves with the identification of abnormal personality patterns. In this text, I develop a 10 item test to measure a given trait. I also give a description of how I create the test and avail an assessment of the test’s strengths as well as weaknesses.
The ten item test of moral character as a trait
The 10 item test I create below is intended for assessing an individual’s moral attitude more so in relation to a cultural as well as religious backdrop. In this test, I take ‘morals’ to mean the various individual behavior or thought components and their conformity to right or wrong notions that are commonly accepted. An analysis of the test responses shall be used chart an individuals moral attitudes in the backdrop of culture and religion.
The ten item test questions
- Are moral principles relative or universal?
- What in your opinion determines moral principles? In other words, are moral principles determined by Genetics or the Environment?
- In your own opinion, are people altruistic or selfish? Why?
- Are people who have different sexual orientations i.e. Gays and Lesbians born that way or are they not?
- Do you agree or disagree with the assertion that abortion should be a matter of choice?
- Do you think assisted suicide as well as euthanasia should be permitted? Why or why not?
- What is your opinion on premarital sex? Is it right or wrong? Why?
- In regard to persons convicted of murder, is the death penalty spelt out to such person’s right or wrong?
- Do you think your Government has an obligation, moral or otherwise to avail aid to countries ranked as developing?
- Do you consider yourself to be liberal or conservative? a) in an economic sense and b) in a social sense
The test creation: a description
According to Aiken et al. (2006), designing a psychological test is not an easy undertaking. In creating the test I present above, I ensured that all the questions asked were unbiased, valid as well as reliable as far as moral character as a trait is concerned. He questions were tailored to specifically to assess individual’s moral attitudes.As I set about to create the test, I figured out the specific trait I wanted to measure and researched on all the contentious issues in morality. This was done to ensure that the specific trait I was interested in was not just an embodiment of my imagination. I then came up with a very long list of questions, 48 to be specific, and then set about to zero in on those I felt were not extremely obvious. Aiken et al. (2006) notes that obvious questions in a psychological test are an incentive for the test taker to answer them in a way that presents a favorable image about him or her.
Strengths and weaknesses of the psychological test created
The questions I formulated for the psychological test above did not have ‘face validity’ that might be taken to be too excessive. This essentially means they were not too obvious and hence the test takers did not tailor their responses to reflect an image they would want to project. The questions were also largely flexible and covered a broad content range.However, I chose to have open ended questions which could result in the generation of a large amount of data which would end up being hard to subject to analysis.
Psychological test creation guideline
It is important to note that as long as there is access to test takers, psychological test designing and execution need not be a strenuous task. Below are the basic steps to be followed when creating a psychological test.
1. Come up with the skill, trait or attitude to be measured.
2. Draft a lengthy questions list (two or three times more than what you want).
3. Zero in on the questions that are not extremely obvious
4. Administer the questions to separate groups and drop those eliciting significantly different answers amongst the two groups.
The considerations in the creation of a psychological test include the enhancement of reliability a well as validity; that is, the questions must test that which they purport to test. There is also the issue of consent. Hence there must be the consideration of consent from the test takers when creating the psychological test.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the significance of psychological tests cannot be overstated. While some are used as measures of a number of clinical problems including but not limited to depression; psychological tests can also be of great importance to recruiters in the job recruitment and selection process. Further, psychological tests have also been utilized in criminal assessment.
References
Aiken, L. & Groth-Marnat, G. (2006). Psychology testing and assessment, 12th Edition. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
