Reference no: EM132324248

Psychological Assessment - Essay Assignment

Jon is an 18-year-old Zulu-speaking student who attended school in rural KwaZulu-Natal. He enrolled for a diploma in administration and would like to eventually use his knowledge and skills in a job that entails regular interaction with others. Some of the tasks typically included in an administrative job are: managing correspondence, dealing with personnel issues, being informed about the budget, answering client queries, arranging and taking minutes at meetings and organising functions. Jon would like to confirm that the career he has in mind is suitable and he requested career counselling from an educational psychologist.

Write a 12 page essay on the assessment process that should be followed. Please note that you should not only write a report on Jon but an essay that covers the different topics.

Guidelines for the outline and content of this essay are given below. Also refer to section 8.5: Assignments in this tutorial letter for the requirements for the technical production and structure and content of an essay in general.

1. Title and list of contents

2. Introduction - Introduce the reader to the specific context of assessment and briefly outline the process of assessment you discussed.

3. Context and aim of the assessment -

• Describe the context of testing with reference to Jon's background and the reason for doing the assessment.
• Define the person-environment fit approach to career counselling and indicate the importance of the domains that are usually assessed.
• Apply the person-environment fit approach of career counselling to this scenario. Consider the typical tasks in an administrative job and briefly discuss the related requirements in terms of general intelligence, aptitude, interest, and personality and values. For example, given the typical tasks which aptitudes, interest and personality traits do you think would be an advantage?

4. Compiling a test battery - The test battery selected by the educational psychologist consists of a measure of general cognitive ability (the Learning Potential Computerised Adaptive Test or LPCAT), an assessment of aptitudes (the Differential Aptitude Tests or DAT), an interest questionnaire (the Self-directed Search or SDS) and a structured personality questionnaire (the Occupational Personality Questionnaire or OPQ). (Please note that you will discuss the tests listed here and that you do not need to select other tests.)

Critically discuss the appropriateness of each of these measures (i.e. The LPCAT, The DAT, The SDS and the OPQ) in this context.

• State the aim of the measure and indicate which constructs it measures. Do not, for example, just say aptitude/s but indicate which aptitude/s.
• Discuss the norm group of the measure (i.e. for what group is norms available?). Now compare Jon's characteristics to this norm group and decide if the norm group is appropriate in terms of age, language, culture, eycetera.
• Describe the psychometric properties (reliability and validity) of the test and indicate if there is any research available on the use of the test in a multicultural context such as South Africa.

Briefly indicate why a measure of learning potential (using dynamic assessment) is more suitable than, for example, a group test of intelligence (based on the psychometric approach) in this instance. (Hint: Refer to Table 2.1 in Tutorial letter 102 and the subsection on Dynamic assessment in Chapter 10.)

5. Administration, interpretation of results and feedback -

• Explain how you would approach the assessment process with reference to the general guidelines for individual administration.
• Discuss the ethical considerations that apply in this context.
• On the next page, Jon's results on the four measures are given. Interpret ONLY the relevant findings on each test. Relate the results to the level of studies (diploma), the career field and his preferred work environment. Please note that we do not expect a detailed interpretation of the test results. We understand that you do not yet have the expertise to make such an interpretation. Limit the length of this subsection (1 to 2 pages).
• Briefly refer to the potential influence of language and socio-cultural factors on these results.
• Comment on the format of the feedback.

6. Conclusion - End the discussion with a conclusion that follows logically from the preceding. There should be a direct relationship between your introduction and the final conclusions and recommendations.

7. Reference list.