“Assessment is a process of gathering and documenting
information about the achievement, skills, abilities,
and personality attributes of an individual.”
The outcomes of psychological assessment may be life-altering,
such as placing a child in special education classes,
denying an applicant for a job, or altering treatment
of a patient. Psychological tests aren’t magic.
They assess and evaluate information that you give to
the examiner, which is why the formal name of psychological
testing is psychological assessment. You give this information
either in the form of answers to interview questions or
as answers on paper—or on a computer—to specific
questions. Ultimately, a test’s accuracy depends
on how carefully and seriously you answer the questions
you’re asked.
Developmental Assessment
is a psychological process to evaluate different developmental
milestones of an individual on various parameters, which
trace out the level of development of each milestone with
comparison to chronological age. Apart from that, psychometric
assessment on other aspects like- personality, interest,
attitude, stress level, anxiety, etc. helps to know one’s
strengths and weaknesses, which further provides a way
to enhance one’s strengths and eliminate weaknesses.
We, at IDAC, conduct assessment on the basis of highly
scientific and globally reliable tools, questionnaires
and techniques.
Purpose
of Assessment
Developmental tests provide information regarding the
milestones a child has attained, and can help in determining
the course of intervention to attain further milestones.
Results of developmental tests may also be used to indicate
the level of progress achieved after intervention, and
are often used by both clinicians and researchers.
Developmental assessment is used to observe functional
ability in children and to identify any deviations from
the norm. It is used to recognize whether or not a disability
may exist and if so, where the specific problem areas
lie. Assessment of children is used for a variety of purposes,
including diagnosing learning disabilities and behavioral
and attention problems.
Career assessment is used to better understand self and
find out suitable career options. It involves self-awareness
and an awareness of the world of work. It should be the
foundation of career planning.
Assessments in educational setting might be used to establish
rankings among individual students, to determine the amount
of information students have retained, to provide feedback
to students on their levels of achievement, to motivate
students by recognizing and rewarding good performances,
to assess the need for remedial education, and to evaluate
students for class placement or ability grouping.
Psychological Testing
Psychological testing uses samples of behavior
(observations over time of task performance, which usually
has been determined beforehand) in order to develop
some generalization about a particular person the tester
is interested in knowing more about. A psychological
test is one of the sources of data used within the process
of assessment usually more than one test is used. A
useful psychological test must be both valid (i.e.,
there is evidence to support the specified interpretation
of the test result) and reliable (i.e., internally consistent
or give consistent results over time, across raters,
etc.).
Following are major type of psychological tests:
Achievement and aptitude tests are usually
seen in educational or employment settings, and they attempt
to measure either
how much you know about a certain topic (i.e., your achieved
knowledge), such as mathematics or spelling, or how much
of a capacity you have (i.e., your aptitude) to master
material in a particular area, such as mechanical relationships.
Intelligence tests attempt to measure
your intelligence—that is, your basic ability to
understand the world around you, understand its functioning,
and apply this knowledge to enhance the quality of your
life. Intelligence, therefore, is a measure of a potential,
not a measure of what you’ve learned (as in an achievement
test), and so it is supposed to be independent of culture.
Interest tests attempt to match your interests with the
interests of persons in known careers. The logic here
is that if the things that interest you in life match
up with, say, the things that interest most school teachers,
then you might make a good school teacher yourself.
Personality tests attempt to measure
your basic personality style and are most used in research
or clinical settings to help with clinical diagnoses.
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