An Introduction to the Draft Report of the Task Force on Test User Qualifications (TFTUQ) Submitted to the American Psychological Association.
Martin W. Anderson, Ph.D.
IPMAAC Professional/Scientific Affairs Committee
Members of IPMAAC will be interested to know that the Practice and Science Directorates of the American Psychological Association (APA) issued a draft report of the task force on test user qualifications (TFTUQ) in June of 1999. The APA has distributed the draft report to numerous test publishing businesses and professional organizations for comment. They have requested that each group submit one response on behalf of its membership by October 1, 1999. I have been asked to prepare the response for IPMAAC so in September, I will be assembling the opinions of IPMAAC members on the draft report so that I can prepare our comments for the APA. I used our IPMAAC Internet list service to advise our members on how they could obtain a copy of the draft report. In this article, I wish to convey my initial impression of the draft report and introduce our membership to the report. For the record, I am a member of the APA and its Division 5.
The stated goal of the task force was to develop guidelines that would inform the public and test users about the qualifications the APA believes are necessary for someone to competently and responsibly use psychological tests. Through the report, the task force identifies what it believes to be the core knowledge and skills for qualified users of psychological tests. The task force then identifies and defines contexts for the uses of psychological tests. These contexts are employment, education, career/vocational counseling, health-care, and forensic. (The section on the employment context will interest IPMAAC members the most.) For each context, the report defines the use of psychological tests within five areas or purposes: "classification" (using test findings to arrive at a classification or diagnosis), "description" (to improve inferences), "prediction" (to predict future behavior), "intervention planning" (to determine the effectiveness of interventions) and "tracking" (to learn the effect of interventions or treatments). The task force also makes training and supervision recommendations for each context.
There were no surprises that I found in the draft given the current literature and how much recent focus there has been on issues such as test taker rights, test fairness, test validity and various technical standards. One controversy for our organization and some others will likely be that the APA has always held the view that qualifications for using psychological tests are best obtained through doctoral training in psychology and APA has not changed its position in the draft report. As I will touch on later in the article, whether or not the recommendations in the report intersect with any of our practices hinges on how "psychological test" is defined. The draft report could use some help in that regard.
In my opinion, the main strength of the draft report is the discussion of the contexts in which psychological tests are given. The TFTUQ report points out that using and interpreting psychological tests not only requires technical knowledge of tests, measures, and theory but also requires a full understanding of the context in which the tests, measures, and theory are to be used. The discussion suggests to me that the mastery of the use and interpretation of certain psychological tests in one setting should not automatically translate for use in another. For example, a person who competently administers and interprets psychological tests in a health-care setting would not appropriately use the psychological tests in an employment setting without understanding how the constructs or traits measured intersect with job requirements or how the use of the psychological tests might contradict employment law and court decisions. Uninformed administration of a psychological test in the latter context could be construed to be unqualified even if the use and interpretation was qualified in another context. This is an interesting approach in the draft report in that it clearly makes knowledge of the full context in which psychological tests are used come to balance with technical knowledge of the psychological tests themselves and measurement theory.
I believe that the chief weakness of the draft report is that it will not advance the public's understanding of psychological test user qualifications. The reason it will not advance the public's understanding is because "psychological test" is too loosely defined in the TFTUQ draft report in contrast to the many types of tests and measures being developed, used or marketed every day. This problem will, in turn, confuse both the public and test users respecting who should or should not be using "tests" or "psychological tests" at what level of qualification and within what context.
The terms "tests" and "psychological tests" are referred to throughout the TFTUQ report. The task force was usually careful to point out that they were addressing test user qualifications respecting "psychological tests". That being so, I still found myself having to rely on my own professional preparation as a school psychologist and psychometrist to know the difference between the two. A good definition of a qualified psychological test user has to rely upon a good definition of both psychological tests and testing contexts. The good definition of psychological tests is not there, in my opinion.
Specifically relating to IPMAAC, I do not see the draft TFTUQ report as trying to set standards for the qualified use of every type of test--particularly those used most routinely by our membership in public sector personnel assessment settings. Still, reading the report, I found myself thinking how easy it would be for someone to identify psychological tests as any tests that can be used to classify, describe, predict, plan, or track. Do biodata instruments, integrity tests, work habit tests, vocational preference inventories, or the ubiquitous MBTI require special qualifications or a doctorate to buy, administer, or interpret? Will "normal" personality assessment never have a place in public sector personnel selection when administered and scored by HR specialists who do not have doctorates in psychology? I do not know from the report.
Members of the public, unions, the courts, test publishing houses, along with protection and advocacy agencies and groups will likely turn to the finished TFTUQ report to judge if individuals or agencies are qualified to develop, administer and score/grade/interpret certain testing instruments. Therefore, the report should do much more to clearly communicate to the public the tests that are rightfully labeled as psychological--as difficult as that may be. For now, I look forward to assembling the comments of our membership on the TFTUQ draft report.
Martin W. Anderson, Ph.D.
IPMAAC Professional/Scientific Affairs Committee
Director, Performance Measurement & Organizational Research
Connecticut Department of Administrative Services
Strategic Leadership Center
165 Capitol Avenue, Room 402
Hartford, CT 06106
V: 860-713-5042
E: martin.anderson@po.state.ct.us
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