Assessment is an important part of any psychologist’s role and the outcome can have consequences, positive and negative, for the person being assessed. The principles and practice of psychological assessment is a guide to drawing up, administering and interpreting assessment procedures, and judging whether the techniques used are theoretically and procedurally sound. It also takes a special look at assessment from an organisational perspective, because although many of the technical and scientific issues with respect to psychological assessment are common to all areas of applied psychology, there are numerous issues and applications that are unique to the organisational context.
The principles and practice of psychological assessment is more of a “how to” than a critical text, but includes some background information and in-depth theorising for more problematic issues. A glossary of terms and a unique cognitive map of psychological tests are provided. Changes in this third edition include a new chapter on the history of assessment in South Africa, and the dominant narrative in some quarters that industrial psychologists set out deliberately to ensure the failure of some segments of the workforce.
The principles and practice of psychological assessment is aimed at third year and honours students of psychology and industrial psychology as well as practitioners.
Section 1 Basic theory of assessment
Chapter 1 Introduction to why and how we assess
Chapter 2 Observation
Chapter 3 Developing a psychological measure
Chapter 4 The history and development of psychological testing in South Africa
Section 2 Introduction to psychometric theory
Chapter 5 Reliability
Chapter 6 Validity
Chapter 7 Combining and interpreting assessment results
Chapter 8 Fairness in assessment
Chapter 9 Assessing in a multicultural context
Chapter 10 Managing the assessment process
Section 3 Domains of assessment
Chapter 11 Assessing intelligence and ability
Chapter 12 The assessment of personality
Chapter 13 Assessing competence
Chapter 14 Assessing integrity and honesty in the workplace
Section 4 Assessment in the organisational context
Chapter 15 Assessment in organisations
Chapter 16 Assessment for career counselling
Chapter 17 Interviewing
Chapter 18 Assessment centres
Section 5 The future of assessment in organisations
Chapter 19 New developments in assessment
Appendix 1 An overview and conceptual map of available tests
Appendix 2 Calculating correlations
Glossary of terms
