Psychologists use various tests to understand how another person is functioning. Medical doctors, teachers and lawyers refer clients for psychological testing when they need an in-depth analysis regarding the individual's functioning or clarification about a specific problem area. Psychology tests even can be used to determine if someone is trying to fake a mental health problem. Although there are many psychological screening tools available, most comprehensive psychological assessments start with intelligence, personality and achievement testing before investigating other, more specific, areas of interest.
Intelligence Testing
Psychological tests that look at intelligence sometimes are referred to as IQ tests or tests of cognition. Broad-based intelligence tests investigate verbal, nonverbal, working memory and processing speed abilities. Verbal abilities refer to both vocabulary and the ability to use language to express and comprehend complex ideas. Nonverbal, or perceptual reasoning ability, refers to visual-spatial processing, mathematical thinking and the ability to solve novel problems. Working memory is the ability to hold information in memory long enough to re-order it or manipulate it in some way, and processing speed is the rate at which new information is taken in and understood.
IQ tests are empirically validated, meaning the questions themselves have been rigorously tested across different age groups and cultures to make sure they consistently measure ability in the area they claim to be measuring. This type of validation is important to psychologists and, as evidenced by the 1955 article titled "Construct Validity in Psychological Tests," information regarding validity constructs has been investigated in detail for more than half a century.
Achievement Testing
While intelligence testing investigates ability, achievement testing looks into actual performance. Most of the time, achievement testing is used to determine if an individual has a learning disorder. Learning disorders can be diagnosed when the ability to perform academic type tasks is much lower than expected given the overall intellectual capacity of the person. In other words, if someone with average IQ is failing out of school, achievement testing may help clarify why this is the case. For example, testing could show the person has attention problems, or that he has a verbal learning disorder and therefore has trouble understanding the information being taught through reading assignments and lectures.
Personality Testing
There are two main kinds of personality testing, objective and projective. Objective testing is empirically based and provides information that is easy to score and categorize along personality tendencies. Many objective personality tests are self-report questionnaires in which the individual is asked to answer a series of yes-or-no questions. The consistency and pattern of their answers is used to determine personality traits such as wanting to please others, narcissistic tendencies, dramatic or histrionic tendencies, concern about what others think, disregard for the rules, underlying anger, propensity for violence, depressive tendencies, leadership styles, coping abilities and more.
Projective tests measure the same types of things, but instead of finite yes-or-no questions, the individual is asked to respond to an ambiguous situation and state what she thinks is happening. Scoring projective responses requires a high degree of analysis on the part of the practitioner. When administered properly, projective tests provide a wealth of information about an individual. However, they should be used in conjunction with objective tests so the results are supported by an empirically validated measure.
