Syllabus
Course content: 1) Goals of psychodiagnostics, its benefits and risks: clinical and psychometric approaches, evaluation of tests and psychodiagnostic methods, requirements for a good manual, authorities in test review 2) Phases of the psychodiagnostic process: goal, strategy, examination, reflection, conclusion with report or feedback and evaluation of the process. 3) Items, their types, basic principles of test development: working with distractors, use of different types of scales, unidimensional vs. multidimensional tests 4) Basic overview of the most used psychological tests: main breakdowns, advantages and disadvantages of different types of tests 6) Item analysis: item difficulty, item discrimination, item correlation with HS, external criterion, inter-item correlation, IRT basics 7) Factor analysis in psychodiagnostics: factor equation, loading, communalities, factor eigenvalue, factor rotation, principles of factor number selection, 5) Norm and normality: population norm, criterion norm and other types of norms, norm generation, Q classification 8) Reliability calculations: measurement theory, general definition of reliability, reliability estimates and how to calculate them, Spearman Brown formula, measurement error 9) Agreement of raters: as an estimate of reliability in observation and assessment, agreement coefficient, kappa coefficient 10) Sensitivity and specificity of tests: cut off scores, ROC curves, AUC (area under curve) 11) Calculations of different types of validity, examples of specific validation studies for different diagnostic methods 12) Test batteries and data integration: quantitative and qualitative integration of diagnostic test data and information, disjunctive, conjunctive, compensatory and combined models. 13) Observation in psychodiagnostics: the most well-known observation systems, training in team interaction diagnosis using IPA, Gottman's SPAFF, Ekman's FACS, etc. 14) Psychodiagnostic interview: basic rules for conducting an interview, types of questions, practice of specific interviews 15) Analysis of traces and activity results in psychodiagnostics: current trends in psychometrics - analysis of digital traces on different online platforms. 16) Model situations, assessment centres and development centres: training in group model situation assessment, observation plus assessment, checking assessor agreement 17) Types of psychological reports: key elements, principles of quality assessment: informational value or detail/specificity, adequacy/accuracy, evidence based approach - evidence based. 18) Feedback on diagnostic assessment results: rules for providing feedback on diagnostic results, practice specific feedback in pairs. 19) Ethical standards of testing and psychodiagnostic process
Annotation
The course teaches students to critically evaluate psychological tests and to use their manuals appropriately. Key topics in this context are item analysis, reliability, validity and test standardization, including the development of appropriate norms.
As part of the development of this skill, each student needs to be able to construct his/her own psychological test or diagnostic procedure and validate its psychometric properties. In addition to expanding their knowledge of psychometrics and psychological testing, students will be introduced to how interview, observation, model situations, or analysis of traces and activity outcomes can be used diagnostically.
Students will be taught the diagnostic process, i.e. how to respond to a specific task by appropriately choosing diagnostic tools and selecting a diagnostic testing strategy. Attention will also be paid to how to verify and integrate the information found into the final psychological report.
