COMPUTER-BASED PSYCHOLOGICAL-TESTING - FORMAT DIFFERENCES AND METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS

COMPUTER-BASED PSYCHOLOGICAL-TESTING - FORMAT DIFFERENCES AND METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS

1995-03-01

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The increasing complexity of psychological test batteries, professional and institutional requirements for rationalisation and automation, and the low costs of personal computer equipement have resulted in the wide-spread marketing of pieces of software for psychological and psychometric assessments. Unlike traditional paper-and-pencil test, psychometric software allows very different technological and conceptual approaches, for both test creation and administration. Various terms as computerized assessment, computerized testing, computer administered testing, computer assisted testing and computer based testing show that there are not only, within a same topic, different conceptual understandings relative to the use and the extent of computers in psychological testing, but that there is also a ''searching process'' for original mental representations which at the same time structure new technical, psychological, and operational modes of computer use in psychometric applications. Most of the literature shows that the psychological research and its experimental layouts still reduce computerized testing to some special kind of item and test presentation, generating false equivalences with classical test administration like: ''computerized version'', ''computer supported administration'', and so on. Thus, it appears that the fundamental understanding of the ''what is different'' during a computerized test cannot be achieved by referring to classical paper-and-pencil test concepts. The present meta-analysis of recent studies points out that there are numerous cognitive, social and ergonomic factors inherent to computerized testing which will lead to ambiguous and contradictory results as long as computerized testing is not thought of as an independent psychometric tool, thoroughly different from paper-and-pencil tests. It is argued here that the format-concept is best adapted to this way of thinking as it helps to determine clearly defined groups of psychometric tools, each including their particular psychological, technical and procedural setting. Starting from the same point of view, we show that basic research methods and their experimental layouts should not mix global format considerations with particular lower-level concepts like item presentation support or response modality. Moreover, differential methods should be based on the same test or the same group of format-compatible tests. That is, synonymous variables of the very traditional layout ''paper-and-pencil version versus computerized version'' must be matched like variables of two namely independent tests and cannot be compared per se because of a heretofor unknown number of intermediate factors (cognitive processing, mental strain, social origine, anxiety...) which seem to have different consequences within different test formats. This paper points out methodological pitfalls in research where computerized tests are considered as subsequent versions of traditional tests. It argues for original layouts and methods which view test conception, test administration and test performance in terms of independent formats.

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TEST-COMPUTER (ASSISTED TESTING)

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FORMAT

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COMPUTER-BASED PSYCHOLOGICAL-TESTING - FORMAT DIFFERENCES AND METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS

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