Psychodiagnostics

Alexey Sergeevich Luchinin Psychodiagnostics

1. Experimental psychology. Works by W. Wundt, F. Galton, G. Ebbinghaus, D. Cattell

Psychodiagnostics As a special scientific discipline, it has gone through a significant path of development and formation.

Psychological diagnostics emerged from psychology and began to take shape at the turn of the 20th century. Its emergence was prepared by several trends in the development of psychology.

Psychodiagnostics grew out of experimental psychology, and its emergence in the 1850-1870s. is associated with the increased influence of natural science on the field of mental phenomena, with the process of “physiologization” of psychology. The first experimental methods were provided to psychology by other sciences, mainly physiology.

The beginning of the emergence of experimental psychology is conventionally considered to be 1878, since it was in this year Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) founded the first experimental psychology laboratory in Germany.

Following the model of Wundt’s laboratory, similar experimental laboratories and classrooms are being created not only in Germany, but also in other countries (France, Holland, England, Sweden, America).

Developing experimental psychology has come close to the study of such mental processes as speech associations - Galton's free word association method. Immediately after publication F. Galton in 1897, Wundt used the association technique in his laboratory.

However, the author who created the first actually psychological experimental method was Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), who studied the laws of memory using sets of meaningless syllables. With this method, Ebbinghaus opened the way for the experimental study of skills.

American psychologist James Cattell (1860–1944) examined attention span and reading skills. Using a tachistoscope (a device that allows the subject to present visual stimuli for short periods of time), he determined the time required to perceive and name various objects: shapes, letters, words, etc. Conducting experiments with reading letters and words on a rotating drum, Cattell recorded the phenomenon of anticipation (“running forward” of perception).

So, at the turn of the 20th century. In psychology, an objective experimental method was established, which began to determine the nature of psychological science as a whole. With the introduction of experiment into psychology and the emergence of new criteria for the scientific nature of its ideas, the prerequisites were created for the emergence of knowledge about individual differences between people.

2. Differential psychology. The emergence of testing as a result of practical requests from medicine, pedagogy and industrialization of production

Differential psychology has become another source of development of psychodiagnostics. Without ideas about individual psychological characteristics, which are the subject of differential psychology, the emergence of psychodiagnostics as a science about methods for measuring them would be impossible.

But the differential psychological study of man was not a simple logical development of experimental psychology. It developed under the influence of the demands of practice, first medical and pedagogical, and then industrial. One of the main reasons that determined the emergence of psychodiagnostics should be considered the need put forward by medical practice for the diagnosis and treatment of mentally retarded and mentally ill people.

One of the earliest publications on mental retardation belongs to a French doctor J. E. D. Esquirol, who sought to differentiate different degrees of mental retardation. Another French doctor E. Seguin was the first to pay attention to teaching mentally retarded children using special techniques. Their work made a certain contribution to the development of methods that helped determine mental retardation.

There is a close internal relationship between the theoretical principles developed within the framework of general psychology and the foundations of psychodiagnostics. Ideas about the patterns of development and functioning of the psyche are the starting point when choosing psychodiagnostic methodology, designing psychodiagnostic techniques, and their use in practice.

The history of psychodiagnostics is both the history of the emergence of basic psychodiagnostic methods and the development of approaches to their creation based on the evolution of views about the nature and functioning of the psyche.

In this regard, it is interesting to trace how some important psychodiagnostic methods were formed within the framework of the main schools of psychology.

3. Behaviorism as a theoretical basis for testing. Behavior as a set of body reactions to stimuli. Works by J. M. Cattell, A. Binet

Test methods are usually associated with behaviorism. Behaviorism introduced the leading category of behavior into psychology. Behavior, according to the behaviorist concept, is the only object of study in psychology. Therefore, the purpose of diagnosis was initially reduced to recording behavior. This is exactly what the first psychodiagnosticians did, who developed test method(term introduced F. Galton).

The first researcher to use the term in psychological literature intelligence test, was J. M. Cattell. He suggested that the scientific and practical value of the tests would increase if the conditions for conducting them were the same. Thus, for the first time, the need was proclaimed standardization tests in order to make it possible to compare their results obtained by different researchers on different subjects. Returning to America after working in Wundt's laboratory and lecturing at Cambridge, he immediately began using tests in the laboratory he had set up at Columbia University (1891).

Following Cattell, other American laboratories began to use the test method. In 1895–1896 In the USA, two national committees were created to unite the efforts of testologists and give a general direction to testological work.

The test method has become widespread. A new step in its development was made by a French doctor and psychologist A. Binet (1857–1911), creator of the most popular test series. Information was required about higher mental functions, usually designated by the concepts of “mind” and “intelligence”.

In 1904, the Ministry of Education commissioned Binet to develop methods with which it would be possible to separate children who were capable of learning, but lazy and did not want to study, from those suffering from congenital defects and unable to study in a normal school. The need for this arose in connection with the introduction of universal education. At the same time, it was necessary to create special schools for mentally handicapped children.

Binet in collaboration with Henri Simon conducted a series of experiments to study attention, memory, and thinking in children of different ages (starting from three years). Experimental tasks carried out on many subjects were tested according to statistical criteria and began to be considered as a means of determining intellectual level.

4. Binet-Simon scale. The concept of "mental age". Stanford-Binet scale. The concept of “intellectual quotient” (IQ). Works by V. Stern

First scale (series of tests) Binet-Simon appeared in 1905. Binet proceeded from the idea that the development of intelligence occurs independently of learning, as a result of biological maturation.

A. Binet scale in its editions (1908 and 1911) it was translated into German and English, differing in that it expanded the age range of children - up to 13 years, increased the number of tasks and introduced the concept of mental age.

Items in the Binet scales were grouped by age (from 3 to 13 years). Children under 6 years old were offered four tasks, and children over 6 years old were offered six tasks. The tasks were selected through a study of a large group of children (300 people).

The indicator of intelligence in the Binet scales was mental age, which was determined by the success of completing test tasks.

Second edition of the Binet scale served as the basis for verification and standardization work carried out at Stanford University (USA) by a team of employees led by L. M. Theremin. This version was proposed in 1916, had many serious changes compared to the main one and was called the Stanford-Binet scale. There were two main differences from Binet's tests: the introduction of intelligence quotient (IQ), determined by the relationship between mental and chronological age, as an indicator for the test, and the use of a testing evaluation criterion, for which the concept of a statistical norm was introduced.

IQ Quotient was offered V. Stern, who considered a significant drawback of the mental age indicator to be that the same difference between mental and chronological age for different age levels has different meanings. Stern proposed to determine the quotient obtained by dividing mental age by chronological age. He called this indicator, multiplied by 100, the IQ. This is how normal children can be classified according to the degree of mental development.

Another innovation of Stanford psychologists was the use of the concept of “statistical norm.” The norm became the criterion by which it was possible to compare individual test indicators and thereby evaluate them and give them a psychological interpretation.

The Stanford-Binet scale was designed for children aged 2.5 to 18 years. It consisted of tasks of varying difficulty, grouped according to age criteria.

5. Mass examination of large groups of subjects. Works by A. S. Otis. The appearance of army tests "Alpha" and "Beta"

The next stage in the development of psychological testing is characterized by a change in the form of testing. All tests created in the first decade of the 20th century were individual and allowed experiments with only one subject. They could only be used by specially trained people who had sufficiently high psychological qualifications.

Practice required diagnosing large masses of people in order to select those most prepared for a particular type of activity, as well as distribute people into different types of activity in accordance with their individual characteristics. Thus, in the United States during the First World War, a new form of testing appeared - group testing.

The need to select and distribute an army of one and a half million recruits to various services, schools and colleges as quickly as possible forced a specially created committee to instruct A. S. Otis development of new tests. This is how two forms of army tests appeared - “Alpha” and “Beta”. The first was intended to work with people who know English, the second - for illiterate people and foreigners. After the end of the war, these tests continued to be widely used.

Group tests were used mainly in the education system, in industry, and in the army.

1920s were characterized by a real test boom. The rapid and widespread spread of testology was primarily due to its focus on quickly solving practical problems.

During the first half of the 20th century. Experts in the field of psychological diagnostics have created a wide variety of tests. At the same time, developing the methodological side of the tests, they brought it to perfection. All tests were carefully standardized on large samples; testologists ensured that all of them had high reliability and good validity.

Validation revealed the limited capabilities of intelligence tests: on their basis, it was often not possible to predict the success of specific, fairly narrow types of activities. In addition to knowledge of the general level of intelligence, additional information about the characteristics of the human psyche was required. This is how a new direction in testology arose - testing of special abilities, which at first was intended only to complement the assessments of intelligence tests, and later became an independent field.

6. Factor analysis. Ch. Spearman's two-factor theory of abilities. Multifactor theory of abilities by T. L. Killey and L. Thurston

Test batteries(sets) were created to select applicants to medical, legal, engineering and other educational institutions. The basis for constructing complex batteries of ability tests was the use of a special technique for processing data on individual differences and correlations between them - factor analysis. Factor analysis made it possible to more accurately determine and classify special abilities.

English psychologist Charles Spearman in 1904 came to the conclusion that a positive correlation between tests of various abilities reveals some common general factor. He designated it with the letter g (from the English general - “general”). Also, in each of them there is a specific factor characteristic only of this type of activity (S-factor).

C. Spearman's theory is called two-factor: The purpose of psychological testing should be to measure q in individuals. If such a factor manifests itself in all mental functions being studied, then its presence is the only basis for predicting an individual’s behavior in different situations. Measuring specific factors does not make sense, since they can only reveal themselves in one situation.

Thurston identified 12 factors, which he designated as primary mental abilities: verbal understanding, speech fluency, numerical factor, spatial factor, associative memory, speed of perception, induction (logical thinking), etc. The number of cognitive factors today is 120.

Based on factorial studies, multifactorial ability test batteries were created to measure the individual level of each ability. The most famous among them is General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB), including aptitude tests for specific professions.

Today, factor analysis is the highest level of linear correlations. Factor analysis and the facts obtained through this analysis do not always correctly reflect the dependencies between mental processes.

Special abilities are interpreted not as individual characteristics that arose as a result of the influence of society's demands on the individual, but as characteristics inherent in a given individual psyche. This interpretation gives rise to logical difficulties.

The capabilities of factor analysis should be treated with caution and this analysis should not be considered a universal tool for studying the psyche.

7. Achievement tests. Questionnaires. Introspectionism as the theoretical basis of the method. Works by F. Galton, A. Binet, R. Woodworth

Achievement tests, unlike intelligence tests, reflect the influence of special training programs on the effectiveness of solving test tasks. In America, achievement tests began to be used in the selection of employees for public service in 1872.

Achievement tests belong to the largest group of diagnostic techniques. One of the most famous and still widely used achievement tests is Stanford Achievement Test (SAT))(1923). With its help, the level of training in different classes of secondary educational institutions is assessed. Further development of achievement tests led to the emergence in the middle of the 20th century. criterion-referenced tests.

Questionnaires are the very first psychodiagnostic methods borrowed by psychologists from natural science.

Questionnaires- this is a large group of techniques, the tasks of which are presented in the form of questions or statements, and the task of the subject is to independently report some information about himself in the form of answers. The theoretical basis of this method can be considered introspectionism. Arose in ancient times within the framework of religious ideology, it contained the thesis about the unknowability of the spiritual world, about the impossibility of an objective study of mental phenomena. This led to the assumption that, apart from introspection, there are no other ways to study human consciousness.

The appearance of the first psychodiagnostic questionnaires is associated with the name F. Galton, who used them not to study personal qualities, but to assess the cognitive sphere of a person (features of visual perception, mental images). At the end of the 10th century Memory studies were conducted using the questionnaire method (Binet, Courtier), general concepts (Ribot), inner speech (Saint Paul) etc. Printed questionnaires were usually sent to the addresses of future respondents, sometimes they were published in magazines.

The prototype of personality questionnaires was developed by an American psychologist Robert Woodworth in 1919 Personal information form. The questionnaire was intended to identify and screen out persons with neurotic symptoms from military service. Over the decades that have passed since then, questionnaires have become widely used as a psychodiagnostic method for studying personality.

8. Projective techniques. Associationism. F. Galton's method of free verbal associations. Psychoanalysis as a theoretical basis for the development of projective techniques

The method of verbal associations, which arose on the basis of associationist theories, is considered the ancestor of projective techniques. Associationism arose in the 18th century.

For the first time, an English doctor turns an association into a universal category that explains all mental activity. Hartley (1705–1757). According to his theory, ideas are interconnected in accordance with the order and connection of material processes occurring in the nervous system.

Also in the 18th century. subjective idealistic associationism developed in the teachings Berkeley And Yuma. According to their ideas, the connection of ideas is given within the elements of consciousness themselves and does not require any real basis.

Emergence free word association method associated with the name Francis Galton

(1822–1911), which asked the subject to respond to the stimulus word with the first word association that came to mind. He used a stopwatch to record the response time. Later this technique was developed in research E. Kraepelin (1892), K. Jung (1906), G. Kent And A. Rozanova (1910) and etc.

The associative experiment stimulated the emergence of such a group of projective techniques as "Completing Sentences.""Sentence completion" was used for the first time to study personality A. Payne in 1928

One of the most popular projective techniques was developed in 1921 by a Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach. In creating this technique, Rorschach experimented with large numbers of inkblots, which he presented to various groups of mentally ill patients.

Thematic Apperception Test - TAT. TAT was created in 1935. X. Morgan And G. Murray. The TAT stimulus material consists of tables with images of uncertain situations that allow ambiguous interpretations. The concept of projection was first used to denote such techniques L. Frank in 1939

Diagnostics using projective techniques occupies a leading position in foreign personality research. Criticisms of these methods boil down to their lack of standardization, neglect of normative data, and intractability to traditional methods of determining reliability and validity.

9. Materialistic basis in Russian experimental psychology. Works of I. M. Sechenov and I. P. Pavlov. “Reflexology” by V. M. Bekhterev

A feature of the development of psychology in the last quarter of the 19th century. experimental research methods were introduced into it. Typically in psychology, the period of development of experimental methods is determined by the work of Wundt and his school. Meanwhile, a study of the history of Russian psychology shows that experimental work developed there, too, and went mainly in a materialist direction. In this way, domestic research in experimental psychology differed from the work of Wundt’s school. In this school, it was proposed to study mental phenomena themselves using introspection, and apply the objective experimental method only to physiological and lower mental processes.

In contrast to Wundtian psychology, many experimental studies in Russian psychology were carried out under the sign materialistic ideas. At the origins of this direction were two of the greatest luminaries of science - I. M. Sechenov (1829–1905) And I. P. Pavlov (1849–1936).

In the works of Sechenov, starting from 1863, a materialistic understanding of mental activity was consistently formed. Studying the material substrate of mental processes - the brain, Sechenov proposed a reflex theory of mental activity. His work was continued by I.P. Pavlov, who created the theory of conditioned reflexes and paved the way from objective research on the functional physiology of the central nervous system to the study of the material foundations of mental phenomena. The views of Sechenov and Pavlov had a decisive influence on the worldview of a prominent representative of the natural science direction in psychology V. M. Bekhtereva. All reflexology of V. M. Bekhterev was the implementation of Sechenov’s reflex theory. Bekhterev sought to identify the connection between mental activity and the brain, with nervous processes, and called mental processes “neuropsyche.” In his opinion, the study of the psyche cannot be limited to its subjective side. Bekhterev argued that “there is not a single conscious or unconscious process of thought that would not be expressed sooner or later by objective manifestations” (Bekhterev V.M. Objective psychology and its subject // Bulletin of Psychology. 1904. No. 9-10. P. 730). Objective psychology should use only an objective method and characterize the mental process only from its objective side, he argued.

10. The first experimental psychology laboratories in Russia

The first experimental one in Russia psychological laboratory opened in 1885 at the clinic of nervous and mental illnesses of Kharkov University; experimental psychology laboratories were set up in St. Petersburg and Dorpat. In 1895, on the initiative of the largest Russian psychiatrist S. S. Korsakova A psychological laboratory was created at the psychiatric clinic of Moscow University. Korsakov’s closest assistant, A. A. Tokarsky. The psychological laboratory at Novorossiysk University (in Odessa) was created at the Faculty of History and Philology by a professor of philosophy N. N. Lange.

In the second half of the 19th century. was introduced into domestic psychology experiment. The first domestic works on psychological diagnostics were carried out in the first decades of the 20th century.

One of the first significant pre-revolutionary domestic works on psychological testing was carried out G. I. Rossolimo in 1909 at Moscow University. He created a methodology for an individual psychological profile, which boiled down to identifying 11 mental processes that were assessed on a ten-point system. A. F. Lazursky created a new direction in differential psychology - scientific characterology. He advocated the creation of a scientific theory of individual differences. He considered the main goal of differential psychology to be “the construction of a person from his inclinations,” as well as the development of the most complete natural classification of characters.

He advocates a natural experiment in which the deliberate intervention of a researcher in a person's life is combined with a natural and relatively simple experimental setting.

Important in Lazursky’s theory was the position of the closest connection between character traits and nervous processes. This was an explanation of personality traits by the neurodynamics of cortical processes. Lazursky's scientific characterology was built as an experimental science based on the study of the neurodynamics of cortical processes. Not initially attaching importance to quantitative methods for assessing mental processes, using only qualitative methods, he later felt the insufficiency of the latter and tried to use graphic diagrams to determine the child’s abilities. But he did not complete the work in this direction; the death of the researcher (1917) prevented him.

11. Development of psychodiagnostics and psychotechnics in the Soviet period. “Measuring scale of the mind” by A. P. Boltunov

Actually, psychodiagnostic work in Russia began to develop in the post-revolutionary period. Many works appeared in the 1920-1930s. in the field of pedagogy, medicine, pedology.

Boltunov's "Measuring Scale of the Mind"(1928), who based his work on the Binet-Simon scale, translated and adapted P. P. Sokolov, has specific features: most of the tasks have been modified, completely new tasks have been introduced, new instructions have been proposed, the time for solving test tasks has been determined, and indicators for age levels have been developed. The fundamental difference between the Boltunov scale and the Binet-Simon scale is the ability to conduct group tests.

A special place in testological research is occupied by the works M. Yu. Syrkina, who specifically studied the problem of the correlation between indicators of talent tests and signs of social status (a fact established in Binet’s first works).

In the 1920s in our country, work psychology and psychotechnics have received significant development (works I. N. Spielrein, S. G. Gellerstein, N. D. Levitov, A. A. Tolchinsky and etc.).

In many cities of the country, psychotechnical laboratories operated, personnel of psychotechnicians were trained, the All-Union Society for Psychotechnics and Applied Psychophysiology was created, the magazine “Soviet Psychotechnics” was published (1928–1934), and psychotechnical conferences and congresses were held.

Psychotechnics was institutionalized by 1927–1928. She has done a lot in the field of searching for rational methods of psychotechnical and vocational training, organizing the labor process, and developing professional skills and abilities.

At the same time, psychotechnics has been criticized, especially for the formal use of some theoretically unfounded tests. The result of this was the cessation of work on psychotechnics by the mid-1930s.

In the early 1930s. a fundamental criticism of many provisions of pedology began, culminating in the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 4, 1936 “On pedological perversions in the system of People's Commissariat of Education.”

The sharp criticism of pedology that unfolded during this period was accompanied by the denial of everything positive that had been done by scientists in one way or another connected with pedology in the field of psychology and psychological diagnostics.

12. Operationalization and verification are the basic requirements for the concepts and methods of psychodiagnostics

Recognition of the right to the existence of new scientific concepts and corresponding phenomena goes hand in hand with the development of psychodiagnostic tools suitable for their study. At the beginning of the 20th century. In psychology, the requirements for concepts and research methods made by the most developed modern sciences were officially recognized and accepted. This allowed psychology as a science to develop further. These are the requirements of operationalization and verification.

Operationalization is understood as a requirement according to which, when introducing new scientific concepts, it is necessary to clearly indicate specific procedures, techniques and methods with the help of which one can practically verify that the phenomenon described in the concept really exists. Involves an indication of practical actions or operations that can be performed by any researcher in order to make sure that the phenomenon defined in the concept has exactly the properties that are attributed to it.

Verification requirement means that any new concept introduced into scientific circulation and claiming to receive scientific status must necessarily be tested for its non-emptiness. The latter presupposes the existence of a technique for experimental diagnostics of the phenomenon described in this concept. The word "verification" literally means "verification". This verification of the non-emptiness of a concept, that is, the reality of the existence of a phenomenon defined by this concept; must be carried out using an appropriate psychodiagnostic procedure.

If, for example, we introduce the concept of “motive” into scientific circulation, then we first need to give a precise definition of this concept through known other concepts and available methods for diagnosing the phenomena included in the content of this concept O nationalization). At the next stage of operationalization of the concept of “motive,” we would have to propose a psychodiagnostic technique with which we could make sure that what is stated in the defining part of this concept really exists. At the final stage, we would have to carry out a practical verification of the existence of the phenomenon “motive” in all the properties assigned to it in the definition. Thus, both operationalization and verification of concepts require recourse to psychodiagnostics, but only operationalization presupposes a theoretical step, and verification a practical step on this path.

13. Forms, questionnaires, drawings and projective psychodiagnostic techniques

Blank methods- those in which the subject is presented with a series of judgments or questions to which he must answer orally or in writing. Based on the responses received by the subject, in turn, the psychology of the person who proposed these answers is judged.

Survey techniques– such techniques, during the application of which a human psychology researcher asks the subject verbal questions, notes and processes his answers.

These methods are good because they do not require the preparation of special forms and allow the psychodiagnostician to behave quite flexibly towards the subject. The disadvantage of survey methods is subjectivity, which manifests itself both in the choice of questions themselves and in the interpretation of answers to them. In addition, survey techniques are difficult to standardize and, therefore, to achieve high reliability and comparability of the results obtained.

Drawing psychodiagnostic techniques– those methods in which drawings created by them are used to study the psychology and behavior of subjects. The technique of interpretation by subjects of standard, ready-made images is used. The content of these images visually presents the problems that the test taker must solve (for example, the Raven's matrix test).

The first and third of the described types of techniques can have two options: manual And computer. In the manual version, the technique is used without the use of electronic computers for presentation or processing of experimental material. In the computer version, at one of the indicated stages of psychodiagnostics, electronic computing technology is used. For example, text and drawing material can be presented to subjects through a display screen, and the machine’s processor can be used to perform quantitative calculations and print the results obtained.

Projective techniques, in turn, they can be forms, surveys and drawings. The frequency of their practical use is also quite high and increases from year to year for the reason that the methods of this group are the most valid and informative.

The next group of techniques is objective-manipulative. In them, the tasks to be solved by the subjects are presented to them in the form of real objects with which they have to do something: assemble from given materials, manufacture, disassemble, etc.

14. General criteria for the classification of psychodiagnostic techniques. The concept of scientific and practical methods

Criteria according to which various psychodiagnostic methods are divided into private groups.

Based on the type of test tasks used, the methods are divided into: survey(questions addressed to subjects), approvers(judgments or statements with which the subject must express his agreement or disagreement), productive(type of the subject’s own creative production), effective(set of practical actions), physiological(analysis of physiological reactions of the human body).

According to the recipient of the test material, psychodiagnostic techniques are divided into conscious And unconscious.

According to the form of presentation of the test material to the test subject, the methods are divided into blank(test material in written or any other symbolic form), technical(test material in audio, video or film form), sensory(material in the form of physical stimuli).

Based on the nature of the data used for psychodiagnostic conclusions, the techniques are divided into objective(indicators that do not depend on the wishes of the subject or experimenter) and subjective(data depending on their wishes).

According to the criterion of the presence of test norms, psychodiagnostic methods are divided into having similar norms And not having them.

According to their internal structure, psychodiagnostic techniques can be divided into monomeric And multidimensional. The first are characterized by the fact that they evaluate one property, and the second by the fact that they are intended for psychodiagnostics of several similar or different types of psychological qualities of a person. Multidimensional ones are divided into several private methods - subscales that assess individual psychological qualities.

Psychodiagnostic techniques based on quality And quantitative analysis of experimental data. In the first case, the property being diagnosed is described in scientific terms, and in the second case, through the relative degree of its development in a given person compared to other people.

Approved by the Council on Psychology of the UMO for classical university education as teaching aid for students of higher educational institutions studying in the field and specialties of psychology

Reviewers:

V.A. Ivannikov, Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAO,

V.D. Shadrikov, Doctor of Psychology sciences, prof., academician of the Russian Academy of Education

Part I. Psychodiagnostics – theoretical and methodological aspects

Section 1. Subject and tasks of psychodiagnostics

1.1. Subject of psychodiagnostics

Psychological diagnostics studies ways to recognize and measure individual psychological characteristics of a person(properties of his personality and characteristics of intelligence). Recognition and measurement are carried out using psychodiagnostic methods.

As a theoretical discipline, general psychodiagnostics considers:

Patterns of making valid and reliable diagnostic judgments;

Rules of “diagnostic inferences”, with the help of which the transition is made from signs or indicators of a certain mental state, structure, process to a statement of the presence and severity of these psychological “variables”.

Sometimes such rules are relatively simple, sometimes quite complex, in some cases they are “built-in” into the diagnostic tool itself, in others they require special work with diagnostic indicators - standard comparison of profiles, calculation of integral indicators, comparison with alternative diagnostic tests, expert interpretation, nomination and discarding hypotheses.

Psychodiagnostics is closely related to the relevant subject areas of psychological science: general psychology, medical, developmental, social, etc. The phenomena, properties and features studied by the listed sciences are measured using psychodiagnostic methods. The results of psychodiagnostic measurements can show not only the presence of a particular property, the degree of its expression, the level of development, they can also act as a way to verify the truth of theoretical and psychological constructs of various psychological directions.

1.2. Psychodiagnostic tasks

General psychodiagnostics is to a certain extent abstracted from specific diagnostic tasks that arise in various particular areas of psychodiagnostics. However, the psychologist must be aware of these tasks, since they significantly determine the limitations in the use of methods. Specificity manifests itself not only in relation to tasks, but also to psychodiagnostic situations in general. This is discrimination client situation And examination situations.

In the first situation, a person turns to a psychologist for help, he willingly cooperates, tries to follow the instructions as accurately as possible, and has no conscious intentions to embellish himself or falsify the results.

In the second, a person knows that he is being examined, tries to pass the “exam,” and to do this, he quite consciously controls his behavior and his answers so as to appear in the most advantageous light (or achieve his goal even at the cost of simulation, deviations and frustration).

In a client situation, much less stringent requirements can be placed on a diagnostic tool regarding its protection from falsification due to a conscious strategy than in an examination situation.

Psychodiagnostic tasks (and psychodiagnostic situations in general) can also be distinguished from the point of view of who will use diagnostic data and how and what is the responsibility of the psychodiagnostician in choosing ways to intervene in the situation of the subject.

Let us briefly indicate these situations.

1. The data is used by a related specialist to make a non-psychological diagnosis or formulate an administrative decision. This situation is typical for the use of psychodiagnostic data in medicine. The psychologist makes a judgment about the specific characteristics of thinking, memory, and personality of the patient, and the doctor makes a medical diagnosis. The psychologist is not responsible either for the diagnosis or for what kind of treatment the doctor will provide to the patient.

The same scheme applies to the use of psychodiagnostic data in psychodiagnostics at the request of the court, a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric examination, psychodiagnostics of the professional competence of an employee or professional suitability at the request of the administration.

2. The data is used by the psychodiagnostician himself to make a psychological diagnosis, although intervention in the situation of the subject is carried out by a specialist of a different profile. This is, for example, the situation of psychodiagnostics in relation to the search for the causes of school failure: the diagnosis is psychological (or psychological-pedagogical) in nature, and the work to implement it is carried out by teachers, parents, and other educators.

3. The data is used by the psychodiagnostician himself to make a psychological diagnosis, and the latter serves as the basis for it(or the basis for the actions of his fellow psychologist) to develop ways of psychological influence. This is the situation of psychodiagnostics in the conditions of psychological consultation.

4. Diagnostic data is used by the person being examined for the purposes of self-development, behavior correction, etc. In this situation, the psychologist is responsible for the correctness of the data, for the ethical deontological aspects of the “diagnosis” and only partially for how this diagnosis will be used by the client. Although there is no strict correspondence between the nature of the task and the psychodiagnostic method, it is still possible to note some preference for certain methods in certain cases.

Thus, in situations 1 and 2, methods should provide “strategic” information about the client, i.e., provide a more or less long-term forecast, they should also allow the correlation of the subject with other people, i.e., involve standardization. Therefore, in these situations, objective tests and questionnaire tests are most widely used, and the latter are sometimes based not on psychological categories, but on the categories of the customer’s conceptual system. These are, for example, the well-known Minnesota Multifactor Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its modifications.

In situation 3, information is often designed to regulate the tactics of the practical work of the psychologist himself; correlation with the “norm” is less important, therefore ideographic techniques, projective and dialogic methods are more often used.

In situation 4, the main requirement for methods is the ease of translating the data obtained with their help into the language of the person being examined. This condition is satisfied, for example, by the 16 PF test by R. Cattell, the Keirsey questionnaire (Myers-Briggs typology), but does not correspond well to the MMPI, the diagnostic descriptions of which are designed for a psychiatrist.

1.3. Regulatory requirements

The deployment of practical work of psychologists in various fields of production, medicine, education, which requires the use of psychodiagnostic techniques, acutely raises the question of the normative regulation of such practice. We are talking about a system of specific requirements for developers and users of methods.

Until recently, the practical and research application of methods was poorly differentiated; this slowed down the development of a set of regulatory requirements (standards) for the practical use of tests and non-standardized procedures. Regulatory regulation must be accompanied by the development of a system of rules that would be ahead of practice and give it guidelines and prospects for the future.

Requirements for psychodiagnostic literature and methodological materials

The developer and user of methods interact primarily through methodological literature. Standard requirements for manual design, methodological instructions, letters and other methodological literature have been accepted as directive documents by societies of psychologists in a number of countries.

It is advisable to distinguish between the range of requirements for documents different types:

To research literature published in scientific journals, collections and monographs;

To review and analytical guides and reference publications covering procedural and quantitative, as well as content-theoretical aspects of the application of a certain technique or a certain class of techniques;

To “available methodological materials”, directly instructing the user in the application of the methodology and containing stimulus material, instructions, texts of tasks, keys, norms, rules of interpretation; popular publications on psychodiagnostics.

1. Scientific communications. Should cover: the theoretical foundations of the methodology (concept and methodological technique), the method of development and empirical justification, research data on the representativeness, reliability, and validity of the scale of test indicators (correlation coefficients, regression and factor weights). For readers, a scientific report may provide “samples”, individual examples of test tasks, which allow them to illustrate the principles on which the methodology is based. Scientific reports should not cover: for methods with professional restrictions (“p-methods”) - the full text of tasks, keys, test standards, detailed instructions for implementation and interpretation. The author of a scientific report should speak about all this information only indirectly, using references to “instructional” literature distributed among specialists. A scientific report may contain comprehensive descriptions of techniques that non-professionals (and their knowledge) possible application non-professionals) cannot cause damage to specific people or the psychodiagnostic potential of the technique itself. This class of techniques is proposed to be conditionally designated by the term “open techniques” (“o-techniques”).

The author of a scientific communication has the right to determine the status of the method he has developed as an open method, but any modifications or adaptations of a method already defined as a professional “p-method” must be covered in scientific communications in accordance with the specified requirements.

2. Reference and methodological publications. These publications may contain instructional materials, including the text of assignments (questions), keys, norms, but under one fundamental condition - the publication is given the “I” status of a publication for specialists, ensuring its distribution among readers who have the necessary psychological training.

3. Instructional documents. They contain a description of the technique that ensures its adequate use in strict accordance with the standards: diagnostic subject, scope of application, population of subjects, application procedure. The description must be provided with detailed information about the procedure for developing the methodology and the data obtained on reliability and validity. The given test norms must be accompanied by an unambiguous description of the standardization sample and the nature of the diagnostic situation in the examination: voluntary participation of subjects who unselfishly cooperate with a psychologist to assist the study (“scientific cooperation”), participation of paid subjects (“paid participation”), use of the methodology during the inquiry subject to receive advisory assistance (“client situation”), the use of the technique during a compulsory (continuous) administrative examination (“examination situation”).

Reference publications and instructional materials must be reviewed periodically (at a certain interval, depending on the type of technique), since the conditions for using techniques inevitably change over time, and, consequently, the psychometric properties change.

Reference and instructional materials must clearly formulate the requirements for the professional status of the user of the technique.

Instructional materials must be passed objective tests for the unambiguity of the instructions specified in them: a trial group of users of the method (test) must send copies of protocols based on the survey results to the author of the manual, on the basis of which the author must ensure the identity of the standards of the author's version of the method and those characteristics of the method that are identified when used by users of the manual. The last requirement is of fundamental importance for methods that involve significant participation of “expert” assessment (instructions for content analysis, for interpreting the results of a projective technique, semi-standardized interview, etc.).

Test scoring and interpretation procedures must be described with unambiguous clarity such that identical results can be obtained when the same protocols are processed by different users of the manual.

It is preferable for test users to include and use local test norms (versus non-population specific ones).

Section 2. History of the development of psychodiagnostics

2.1. Development of practical psychodiagnostics

Francis Galton in 1883 he published a voluminous monograph, which contains descriptions of a number of standardized tests he developed to assess sensory and psychomotor abilities. Thanks to this, the idea of ​​differential psychology, put forward by him back in 1869, is put on the rails of practically feasible mass surveys.

In the early 1890s. Emil Kraepelin puts forward the idea of ​​using methods experimental psychology to the tasks of psychological and psychiatric diagnostics. His student E. Oern is the first to implement this idea in practice in relation to the assessment of intellectual abilities. The techniques he used covered mental functions such as perception, memory, association and motor skills.

The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. are characterized by the rapid development of methods for psychological diagnostics of various intellectual characteristics of an individual, and this entire direction as a whole receives in specialist circles the general name of mentimetry or intelligence measurement.

In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus publishes a message about a method he developed for testing the ability to remember missing words in a text. In fact, this was the first group test of thinking ability.

In 1908 Alfred Binet And Thomas Simon published the main version of their "Metric Scale of Intelligence", which provided a measurement of the so-called mental age of an individual. In 1912 William Stern proposed measuring a child's intelligence in terms of IQ(CI), calculated by dividing mental age by chronological age. In 1916, professor at Stanford University Lewis Theremin completed the revision of the Binet-Simon scale in relation to country conditions in English 1
Under the leadership of L. Theremin, two more revisions of this scale were subsequently published, known as the Stanford-Binet scale, 1937 and Stanford-Binet scale, 1960.

This was the first individual test of “general intelligence” to find widespread practical use; he was in one way or another the prototype of all the mental tests that followed him.

In 1910, Russian psychologist G. I. Rossolimo published his methodology for assessing various mental abilities based on taking into account intra-individual differences, that is, by constructing individual “psychological profiles”. This method became widespread both in our country and abroad, anticipating by several decades the idea of ​​so-called test batteries, which are currently very popular in Western countries.

During the First World War, a special commission of the American Psychological Association, headed Robert Yerkes, developed the Army Intelligence Test. This was the first group test of general intelligence. Based on its application, “intelligent sorting” of 1 million 727 thousand recruits of the American army was carried out. A similar situation is developing in the Russian army: first during the Russo-Japanese War, and then during the First World War, an almost universal medical and psychological examination of recruits and junior officers was introduced into the army. Psychological tests began to conquer the European and American continents.

Deployment of test developments abroad

The rapid march of mentimetry and psychological testing across these two continents continues in the 20th century, primarily covering English-speaking countries.

At the end of the 1930s. David Wexler publishes its methods of individual testing: a scale for measuring the intelligence of adults ( last rework dates back to 1955); in 1949 - a scale for measuring the intelligence of adolescents and in 1967 - a scale for measuring the intelligence of preschool and younger children preschool age. The main advantage of these methods compared to the Binet-Simon scale is their construction as “batteries”, consisting of several subtests, which makes it possible to determine CI in relation to individual mental abilities.

During World War II in the USA various types testing covered over 9 million people, most of whom were military personnel. The Air Force created a special test battery to classify flight school cadets (pilot, bombardier, navigator). The Army Intelligence Test was the prototype for many subsequent group "general intelligence" tests, of which the most widely used batteries today are the Differential Aptitude Tests and the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. The last of these batteries is used to select applicants to universities and colleges. About 2 million people pass through it every year. In general, in the early 1960s. in general education and higher school In the United States, about 250 million units of various tests were used annually, most of which were intelligence tests.

A similar situation is developing in Europe. Thus, in England in 1972, the National Foundation for Educational Research alone supplied schools with about 3.5 million units of various intellectual tests.

By the end of the 1920s. the use of various mental tests (primarily group tests) has become so widespread in the West that many authors use concepts such as “boom”, “epidemic”, “psychosis” to characterize this phenomenon. And the point here is not only in the scale of application of test methods - the main thing is that the overwhelming majority of these methods were (and still are) of a clearly empirical nature. Although a lot of creativity and ingenuity was invested in their design, nevertheless, as a rule, they do not have any developed theoretical basis. This concerns not only understanding the very essence of the test method, but also revealing the content and characteristics of those mental properties that are selected as the subject of testing in a particular test. The authors of many intelligence tests openly stated that they were not concerned about this issue, the main thing was the presence of a more or less close correlation with the predicted behavior.

The corresponding “credo” was formulated at one time L. Theremin, who tried to justify “blind” testing of the mind with an analogy with the use of electricity: although, he wrote, the nature of this phenomenon has not really been revealed, nevertheless it is not only successfully measured, but also widely used for practical purposes. And today, despite the rapidly growing understanding by foreign testologists of the role of theoretical knowledge, this illegitimate mechanistic analogy still influences individual authors, such famous ones as, for example, G. Eysenck .

Based on the use of intelligence tests and in accordance with the theory of measuring “innate intelligence” in the USA, England and other European countries, “intellectual segregation” of schoolchildren is actually carried out on a large scale. At the same time, the division into “intellectual strata” becomes almost irreversible: the shortcomings of the theory seemed to be completely compensated for by the enormous volume of statistical material, creating the illusion of objectivity of measurements. The revelation by progressive psychologists of the theory of measuring “innate intelligence” significantly stimulated protests by wide sections of the public against the intellectual segregation of schoolchildren, since the excessive and perverted use of “mentimetry” led to the fact that children of the lower and low-income strata of the population were practically deprived of the opportunity to receive a full-fledged secondary education, without speaking of the highest. As a result, in the 1960s. Municipal authorities of New York and some other US cities were forced to issue a directive to stop using group intelligence tests in schools. Nevertheless, in a disguised form, “intelligent selection” continues to be practiced in both the USA and England.

Over the past decades, foreign testologists have published a number of fundamental works on “test theory”. However, what this term denotes is actually very far from psychological theory. As rightly noted Anne Anastasi, the above “test theory” is not a psychological, but a mathematical-statistical theory that covers such issues as the nature of test scores, scales and methods for determining the reliability of tests, etc. We ourselves can be convinced of this by getting acquainted with the above-mentioned works, as well as with special works on the history of psychological testing.

Approved by the Council on Psychology of the UMO for classical university education as teaching aid for students of higher educational institutions studying in the field and specialties of psychology

Reviewers:

V.A. Ivannikov, Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAO,

V.D. Shadrikov, Doctor of Psychology sciences, prof., academician of the Russian Academy of Education

Part I. Psychodiagnostics – theoretical and methodological aspects

Section 1. Subject and tasks of psychodiagnostics

1.1. Subject of psychodiagnostics

Psychological diagnostics studies ways to recognize and measure individual psychological characteristics of a person(properties of his personality and characteristics of intelligence). Recognition and measurement are carried out using psychodiagnostic methods.

As a theoretical discipline, general psychodiagnostics considers:

♦ patterns of making valid and reliable diagnostic judgments;

♦ rules of “diagnostic inferences”, with the help of which the transition is made from signs or indicators of a certain mental state, structure, process to a statement of the presence and severity of these psychological “variables”.

Sometimes such rules are relatively simple, sometimes quite complex, in some cases they are “built-in” into the diagnostic tool itself, in others they require special work with diagnostic indicators - standard comparison of profiles, calculation of integral indicators, comparison with alternative diagnostic tests, expert interpretation, nomination and discarding hypotheses.

Psychodiagnostics is closely related to the relevant subject areas of psychological science: general psychology, medical, developmental, social, etc. The phenomena, properties and features studied by the listed sciences are measured using psychodiagnostic methods. The results of psychodiagnostic measurements can show not only the presence of a particular property, the degree of its expression, the level of development, they can also act as a way to verify the truth of theoretical and psychological constructs of various psychological directions.

1.2. Psychodiagnostic tasks

General psychodiagnostics is to a certain extent abstracted from specific diagnostic tasks that arise in various particular areas of psychodiagnostics. However, the psychologist must be aware of these tasks, since they significantly determine the limitations in the use of methods. Specificity manifests itself not only in relation to tasks, but also to psychodiagnostic situations in general. This is discrimination client situation And examination situations.

In the first situation, a person turns to a psychologist for help, he willingly cooperates, tries to follow the instructions as accurately as possible, and has no conscious intentions to embellish himself or falsify the results.

In the second, a person knows that he is being examined, tries to pass the “exam,” and to do this, he quite consciously controls his behavior and his answers so as to appear in the most advantageous light (or achieve his goal even at the cost of simulation, deviations and frustration).

In a client situation, much less stringent requirements can be placed on a diagnostic tool regarding its protection from falsification due to a conscious strategy than in an examination situation.

Psychodiagnostic tasks (and psychodiagnostic situations in general) can also be distinguished from the point of view of who will use diagnostic data and how and what is the responsibility of the psychodiagnostician in choosing ways to intervene in the situation of the subject. Let us briefly indicate these situations.

1. The data is used by a related specialist to make a non-psychological diagnosis or formulate an administrative decision. This situation is typical for the use of psychodiagnostic data in medicine. The psychologist makes a judgment about the specific characteristics of thinking, memory, and personality of the patient, and the doctor makes a medical diagnosis. The psychologist is not responsible either for the diagnosis or for what kind of treatment the doctor will provide to the patient.

The same scheme applies to the use of psychodiagnostic data in psychodiagnostics at the request of the court, a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric examination, psychodiagnostics of the professional competence of an employee or professional suitability at the request of the administration.

2. The data is used by the psychodiagnostician himself to make a psychological diagnosis, although intervention in the situation of the subject is carried out by a specialist of a different profile. This is, for example, the situation of psychodiagnostics in relation to the search for the causes of school failure: the diagnosis is psychological (or psychological-pedagogical) in nature, and the work to implement it is carried out by teachers, parents, and other educators.

3. The data is used by the psychodiagnostician himself to make a psychological diagnosis, and the latter serves as the basis for it(or the basis for the actions of his fellow psychologist) to develop ways of psychological influence. This is the situation of psychodiagnostics in the conditions of psychological consultation.

4. Diagnostic data is used by the person being examined for the purposes of self-development, behavior correction, etc. In this situation, the psychologist is responsible for the correctness of the data, for the ethical deontological aspects of the “diagnosis” and only partially for how this diagnosis will be used by the client. Although there is no strict correspondence between the nature of the task and the psychodiagnostic method, it is still possible to note some preference for certain methods in certain cases.

Thus, in situations 1 and 2, methods should provide “strategic” information about the client, i.e., provide a more or less long-term forecast, they should also allow the correlation of the subject with other people, i.e., involve standardization. Therefore, in these situations, objective tests and questionnaire tests are most widely used, and the latter are sometimes based not on psychological categories, but on the categories of the customer’s conceptual system. These are, for example, the well-known Minnesota Multifactor Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its modifications.

In situation 3, information is often designed to regulate the tactics of the practical work of the psychologist himself; correlation with the “norm” is less important, therefore ideographic techniques, projective and dialogic methods are more often used.

In situation 4, the main requirement for methods is the ease of translating the data obtained with their help into the language of the person being examined. This condition is satisfied, for example, by the 16 PF test by R. Cattell, the Keirsey questionnaire (Myers-Briggs typology), but does not correspond well to the MMPI, the diagnostic descriptions of which are designed for a psychiatrist.

1.3. Regulatory requirements

The deployment of practical work of psychologists in various fields of production, medicine, education, which requires the use of psychodiagnostic techniques, acutely raises the question of the normative regulation of such practice. We are talking about a system of specific requirements for developers and users of methods.

Until recently, the practical and research application of methods was poorly differentiated; this slowed down the development of a set of regulatory requirements (standards) for the practical use of tests and non-standardized procedures. Regulatory regulation must be accompanied by the development of a system of rules that would be ahead of practice and give it guidelines and prospects for the future.

Requirements for psychodiagnostic literature and methodological materials

The developer and user of methods interact primarily through methodological literature. Standard requirements for the design of manuals, guidelines, letters and other methodological literature have been adopted as directive documents by societies of psychologists in a number of countries.

It is advisable to distinguish between the range of requirements for documents of different types:

♦ to research literature published in scientific journals, collections and monographs;

♦ to review and analytical guides and reference publications covering procedural and quantitative, as well as content-theoretical aspects of the application of a certain technique or a certain class of techniques;

♦ to “available methodological materials”, directly instructing the user in the application of the methodology and containing stimulus material, instructions, texts of tasks, keys, norms, rules of interpretation; popular publications on psychodiagnostics.

1. Scientific communications. Should cover: the theoretical foundations of the methodology (concept and methodological technique), the method of development and empirical justification, research data on the representativeness, reliability, and validity of the scale of test indicators (correlation coefficients, regression and factor weights). For readers, a scientific report may provide “samples”, individual examples of test tasks, which allow them to illustrate the principles on which the methodology is based. Scientific reports should not cover: for methods with professional restrictions (“p-methods”) - the full text of tasks, keys, test standards, detailed instructions for implementation and interpretation. The author of a scientific report should speak about all this information only indirectly, using references to “instructional” literature distributed among specialists. A scientific report may contain comprehensive descriptions of techniques, knowledge of which by non-professionals (and their possible use by non-professionals) cannot cause damage to specific people or the psychodiagnostic potential of the technique itself. This class of techniques is proposed to be conditionally designated by the term “open techniques” (“o-techniques”).

The author of a scientific communication has the right to determine the status of the method he has developed as an open method, but any modifications or adaptations of a method already defined as a professional “p-method” must be covered in scientific communications in accordance with the specified requirements.

2. Reference and methodological publications. These publications may contain instructional materials, including the text of assignments (questions), keys, norms, but under one fundamental condition - the publication is given the “I” status of a publication for specialists, ensuring its distribution among readers who have the necessary psychological training.

3. Instructional documents. They contain a description of the technique that ensures its adequate use in strict accordance with the standards: diagnostic subject, scope of application, population of subjects, application procedure. The description must be provided with detailed information about the procedure for developing the methodology and the data obtained on reliability and validity. The given test norms must be accompanied by an unambiguous description of the standardization sample and the nature of the diagnostic situation in the examination: voluntary participation of subjects who unselfishly cooperate with a psychologist to assist the study (“scientific cooperation”), participation of paid subjects (“paid participation”), use of the methodology during the inquiry subject to receive advisory assistance (“client situation”), the use of the technique during a compulsory (continuous) administrative examination (“examination situation”).

Reference publications and instructional materials must be reviewed periodically (at a certain interval, depending on the type of technique), since the conditions for using techniques inevitably change over time, and, consequently, the psychometric properties change.

Reference and instructional materials must clearly formulate the requirements for the professional status of the user of the technique.

Instructional materials must be passed objective tests for the unambiguity of the instructions specified in them: a trial group of users of the method (test) must send copies of protocols based on the survey results to the author of the manual, on the basis of which the author must ensure the identity of the standards of the author's version of the method and those characteristics of the method that are identified when used by users of the manual. The last requirement is of fundamental importance for methods that involve significant participation of “expert” assessment (instructions for content analysis, for interpreting the results of a projective technique, semi-standardized interview, etc.).

Test scoring and interpretation procedures must be described with unambiguous clarity such that identical results can be obtained when the same protocols are processed by different users of the manual.

It is preferable for test users to include and use local test norms (versus non-population specific ones).

Section 2. History of the development of psychodiagnostics

2.1. Development of practical psychodiagnostics

Francis Galton in 1883 he published a voluminous monograph, which contains descriptions of a number of standardized tests he developed to assess sensory and psychomotor abilities. Thanks to this, the idea of ​​differential psychology, put forward by him back in 1869, is put on the rails of practically feasible mass surveys.

In the early 1890s. Emil Kraepelin puts forward the idea of ​​applying the methods of experimental psychology to the problems of psychological and psychiatric diagnostics. His student E. Oern is the first to implement this idea in practice in relation to the assessment of intellectual abilities. The techniques he used covered mental functions such as perception, memory, association and motor skills.

The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. are characterized by the rapid development of methods for psychological diagnostics of various intellectual characteristics of an individual, and this entire direction as a whole receives in specialist circles the general name of mentimetry or intelligence measurement.

In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus publishes a message about a method he developed for testing the ability to remember missing words in a text. In fact, this was the first group test of thinking ability.

In 1908 Alfred Binet And Thomas Simon published the main version of their "Metric Scale of Intelligence", which provided a measurement of the so-called mental age of an individual. In 1912 William Stern proposed measuring a child's intelligence in terms of IQ(CI), calculated by dividing mental age by chronological age. In 1916, professor at Stanford University Lewis Theremin completed the revision of the Binet-Simon scale in relation to the conditions of English-speaking countries.

This was the first individual test of “general intelligence” to find widespread practical use; he was in one way or another the prototype of all the mental tests that followed him.

In 1910, Russian psychologist G. I. Rossolimo published his methodology for assessing various mental abilities based on taking into account intra-individual differences, that is, by constructing individual “psychological profiles”. This method became widespread both in our country and abroad, anticipating by several decades the idea of ​​so-called test batteries, which are currently very popular in Western countries.

During the First World War, a special commission of the American Psychological Association, headed Robert Yerkes, developed the Army Intelligence Test. This was the first group test of general intelligence. Based on its application, “intelligent sorting” of 1 million 727 thousand recruits of the American army was carried out. A similar situation is developing in the Russian army: first during the Russo-Japanese War, and then during the First World War, an almost universal medical and psychological examination of recruits and junior officers was introduced into the army. Psychological tests began to conquer the European and American continents.

Deployment of test developments abroad

The rapid march of mentimetry and psychological testing across these two continents continues in the 20th century, primarily covering English-speaking countries.

At the end of the 1930s. David Wexler publishes its methods of individual testing: a scale for measuring the intelligence of adults (last revision dates back to 1955); in 1949 - a scale for measuring the intelligence of adolescents and in 1967 - a scale for measuring the intelligence of preschool and early preschool children. The main advantage of these methods compared to the Binet-Simon scale is their construction as “batteries”, consisting of several subtests, which makes it possible to determine CI in relation to individual mental abilities.

During the Second World War in the United States, various types of testing covered over 9 million people, most of whom were military personnel. The Air Force created a special test battery to classify flight school cadets (pilot, bombardier, navigator). The Army Intelligence Test was the prototype for many subsequent group "general intelligence" tests, of which the most widely used batteries today are the Differential Aptitude Tests and the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. The last of these batteries is used to select applicants to universities and colleges. About 2 million people pass through it every year. In general, in the early 1960s. In general education and higher education in the United States, about 250 million units of various tests were used annually, most of which were intellectual tests.

A similar situation is developing in Europe. Thus, in England in 1972, the National Foundation for Educational Research alone supplied schools with about 3.5 million units of various intellectual tests.

By the end of the 1920s. the use of various mental tests (primarily group tests) has become so widespread in the West that many authors use concepts such as “boom”, “epidemic”, “psychosis” to characterize this phenomenon. And the point here is not only in the scale of application of test methods - the main thing is that the overwhelming majority of these methods were (and still are) of a clearly empirical nature. Although a lot of creativity and ingenuity was invested in their design, nevertheless, as a rule, they do not have any developed theoretical basis. This concerns not only understanding the very essence of the test method, but also revealing the content and characteristics of those mental properties that are selected as the subject of testing in a particular test. The authors of many intelligence tests openly stated that they were not concerned about this issue, the main thing was the presence of a more or less close correlation with the predicted behavior.

The corresponding “credo” was formulated at one time L. Theremin, who tried to justify “blind” testing of the mind with an analogy with the use of electricity: although, he wrote, the nature of this phenomenon has not really been revealed, nevertheless it is not only successfully measured, but also widely used for practical purposes. And today, despite the rapidly growing understanding by foreign testologists of the role of theoretical knowledge, this illegitimate mechanistic analogy still influences individual authors, such famous ones as, for example, G. Eysenck .

Based on the use of intelligence tests and in accordance with the theory of measuring “innate intelligence” in the USA, England and other European countries, “intellectual segregation” of schoolchildren is actually carried out on a large scale. At the same time, the division into “intellectual strata” becomes almost irreversible: the shortcomings of the theory seemed to be completely compensated for by the enormous volume of statistical material, creating the illusion of objectivity of measurements. The revelation by progressive psychologists of the theory of measuring “innate intelligence” significantly stimulated protests by wide sections of the public against the intellectual segregation of schoolchildren, since the excessive and perverted use of “mentimetry” led to the fact that children of the lower and low-income strata of the population were practically deprived of the opportunity to receive a full-fledged secondary education, without speaking of the highest. As a result, in the 1960s. Municipal authorities of New York and some other US cities were forced to issue a directive to stop using group intelligence tests in schools. Nevertheless, in a disguised form, “intelligent selection” continues to be practiced in both the USA and England.

Over the past decades, foreign testologists have published a number of fundamental works on “test theory”. However, what this term denotes is actually very far from psychological theory. As rightly noted Anne Anastasi, the above “test theory” is not a psychological, but a mathematical-statistical theory that covers such issues as the nature of test scores, scales and methods for determining the reliability of tests, etc. We can verify this ourselves by reading the works mentioned above, as well as special works on the history of psychological testing.

The experience of using mentalimetric tests quite convincingly shows that the “direct application” of particular psychological theories in the absence of suitable personality models that integrate them, as well as the lack of suitable models of behavior, where the psyche acts as a regulator of behavior, leads to a negative practical result, despite the apparent justified reliability of mathematical, “technological” models of the so-called test theory. All this means the need for a special analysis of the relationships and connections between “models” of very different kinds and quality: models of the psyche as a regulator of behavior, models of personality as an integrator of the psyche, models of data representation and models of their processing.

Even after various theories of child mental development began to take shape (for example, L. S. Vygotsky , J. Piaget , J. Bruner), foreign mentality continued to remain a unique mathematical and statistical discipline, isolated from the achievements of psychological science.

Tracing the history of mentalimetric thought from A. Binet to this day, having examined in detail the work L. Theremin, C. Spearman, L. Thurstone, D. Wexler, J. Guilford, J. Piaget, one of the historians of testology comes to the conclusion that “not a single theory or model has become the basis for any mental test, with the exception of perhaps the works J. Guilford» .

Presence of names in this list A. Binet, L. Theremin, D. Wexler may seem somewhat unexpected, since these authors went down in history as the creators of very popular test methods. The paradox, however, lies elsewhere: not one of them based the test he created on any clearly formulated concept of personality, limiting himself only to private theoretical considerations, although each was quite famous for his theoretical works.

C. Spearman And J. Piaget were not involved in constructing tests at all, but the first of them widely used test techniques to substantiate his theory of “general (general) factor a". Attempts to develop a number of tests based on experimental techniques J. Piaget(and therefore on his concept of mental development) have not yet led to the creation of such tools that would go beyond the walls of research laboratories. As for J. Guilford, then, although he based his tests on a certain theoretical concept, the latter, however, turned out to be insufficiently viable from a strictly pragmatic point of view.

This does not directly apply to the so-called personality tests, since they, as a rule, have a more solid theoretical basis (although here, in a number of cases, we are faced with examples of “bare empiricism”).

As already noted, the history of the construction of personality tests dates back to 1912, when Edward Thorndike began to develop questionnaires to determine the prevailing interests of an individual. But the first truly personal test that received practical application (and at the same time had a significant influence on the subsequent development of “self-descriptive” tests) was the “personality inventory” (inventory) to identify neuroses in military personnel, proposed in 1919 Robert Woodworth .

If we continue our review of the history of development and the emergence of personality tests of the blank type, then the chronological list of the most significant methods will look like this:

♦ 1927 – Edward Strong publishes his Card of Vocational Interests;

♦ 1926 - Gordon Allport's dominance-submission test appears;

♦ 1928 – The Personal Values ​​Test, developed by Gordon Allport and Philip Vernon, is published;

♦ 1940 - S. Hathaway and D. McKinley publish their Minnesota Multifactor Personality Inventory - MMPI - one of the most popular blank tests in the West.

From the so-called personality-activity tests Let us note as pioneering developments two techniques of the projective type: the test of colored inkblots, developed Hermann Rorschach, and the TAT thematic apperception test, the authors of which are G. Murray And S. D. Morgan .

Projective techniques are aimed at measuring personality traits and intelligence. They have a number of features that make them significantly different from standardized methods, namely:

♦ features of the stimulus material;

♦ features of the task assigned to the respondent;

♦ features of processing and interpretation of results.

1. A distinctive feature of the stimulus material of projective techniques is its ambiguity, uncertainty, lack of structure, which is a necessary condition implementation of the projection principle. In the process of interaction of the individual with the stimulus material, its structuring occurs, during which the individual projects the features of his inner world - needs, conflicts, anxiety, etc.

2. A relatively unstructured task that allows for an unlimited variety of possible answers is one of the main features of projective techniques. Testing using projective techniques is disguised testing, since the respondent cannot guess what exactly in his answer is the subject of interpretation by the experimenter. Projective methods are less susceptible to falsification than questionnaires based on information about the individual.

3. There is a problem of standardization of projective techniques. Some methods do not contain a mathematical apparatus for objective processing of the results obtained and do not contain standards. They are characterized by a qualitative approach to the study of personality, rather than a quantitative one, as is the case with psychometric tests, and therefore adequate methods for testing their reliability and giving them validity have not yet been developed.

Since the 1930s The Rorschach test was widely introduced into the research and clinical diagnostic work of psychologists, and the first methodological manuals were published. It is important to emphasize that the use of the Rorschach test as a diagnostic tool was accompanied by a clear, deep reflection of diagnostic tasks and theoretical models for justifying the test based on Marxist methodology. Based on the basic principles about the biased nature of mental activity, specific theoretical justifications were built on the basis of such categories as “attitude”, “personal component” of perception, “individual personality style”.

Completing short review and assessing the current state of foreign testing, it should be noted that to date it has in its arsenal several hundred different methods: on the one hand, purely instrumental ones, designed to measure narrow special abilities, and on the other, various complex tests of so-called character traits, “general” and analytical, individual and group, blank and instrumental, self-descriptive and activity-based (the latter, in turn, are divided into situational and projective). Publications in which these techniques are described and commented on number literally in the thousands. However, as we will see below, among this sea of ​​publications, works that analyze the theoretical aspects of the test method in sufficient depth represent tiny islands.

Under the leadership of L. Theremin, two more revisions of this scale were subsequently published, known as the Stanford-Binet scale, 1937 and Stanford-Binet scale, 1960.

E.S. Romanova

Psychodiagnostics

Tutorial

Approved by the Council on Psychology of the UMO for classical university education as teaching aid for students of higher educational institutions studying in the field and specialties of psychology

Reviewers:

V.A. Ivannikov, Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAO,

V.D. Shadrikov, Doctor of Psychology sciences, prof., academician of the Russian Academy of Education

Part I. Psychodiagnostics – theoretical and methodological aspects

Section 1. Subject and tasks of psychodiagnostics

1.1. Subject of psychodiagnostics

Psychological diagnostics studies ways to recognize and measure individual psychological characteristics of a person(properties of his personality and characteristics of intelligence). Recognition and measurement are carried out using psychodiagnostic methods.

As a theoretical discipline, general psychodiagnostics considers:

♦ patterns of making valid and reliable diagnostic judgments;

♦ rules of “diagnostic inferences”, with the help of which the transition is made from signs or indicators of a certain mental state, structure, process to a statement of the presence and severity of these psychological “variables”.

Sometimes such rules are relatively simple, sometimes quite complex, in some cases they are “built-in” into the diagnostic tool itself, in others they require special work with diagnostic indicators - standard comparison of profiles, calculation of integral indicators, comparison with alternative diagnostic tests, expert interpretation, nomination and discarding hypotheses.

Psychodiagnostics is closely related to the relevant subject areas of psychological science: general psychology, medical, developmental, social, etc. The phenomena, properties and features studied by the listed sciences are measured using psychodiagnostic methods. The results of psychodiagnostic measurements can show not only the presence of a particular property, the degree of its expression, the level of development, they can also act as a way to verify the truth of theoretical and psychological constructs of various psychological directions.

1.2. Psychodiagnostic tasks

General psychodiagnostics is to a certain extent abstracted from specific diagnostic tasks that arise in various particular areas of psychodiagnostics. However, the psychologist must be aware of these tasks, since they significantly determine the limitations in the use of methods. Specificity manifests itself not only in relation to tasks, but also to psychodiagnostic situations in general. This is discrimination client situation And examination situations.

In the first situation, a person turns to a psychologist for help, he willingly cooperates, tries to follow the instructions as accurately as possible, and has no conscious intentions to embellish himself or falsify the results.

In the second, a person knows that he is being examined, tries to pass the “exam,” and to do this, he quite consciously controls his behavior and his answers so as to appear in the most advantageous light (or achieve his goal even at the cost of simulation, deviations and frustration).

In a client situation, much less stringent requirements can be placed on a diagnostic tool regarding its protection from falsification due to a conscious strategy than in an examination situation.

Psychodiagnostic tasks (and psychodiagnostic situations in general) can also be distinguished from the point of view of who will use diagnostic data and how and what is the responsibility of the psychodiagnostician in choosing ways to intervene in the situation of the subject. Let us briefly indicate these situations.

1. The data is used by a related specialist to make a non-psychological diagnosis or formulate an administrative decision. This situation is typical for the use of psychodiagnostic data in medicine. The psychologist makes a judgment about the specific characteristics of thinking, memory, and personality of the patient, and the doctor makes a medical diagnosis. The psychologist is not responsible either for the diagnosis or for what kind of treatment the doctor will provide to the patient.

The same scheme applies to the use of psychodiagnostic data in psychodiagnostics at the request of the court, a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric examination, psychodiagnostics of the professional competence of an employee or professional suitability at the request of the administration.

2. The data is used by the psychodiagnostician himself to make a psychological diagnosis, although intervention in the situation of the subject is carried out by a specialist of a different profile. This is, for example, the situation of psychodiagnostics in relation to the search for the causes of school failure: the diagnosis is psychological (or psychological-pedagogical) in nature, and the work to implement it is carried out by teachers, parents, and other educators.

3. The data is used by the psychodiagnostician himself to make a psychological diagnosis, and the latter serves as the basis for it(or the basis for the actions of his fellow psychologist) to develop ways of psychological influence. This is the situation of psychodiagnostics in the conditions of psychological consultation.

4. Diagnostic data is used by the person being examined for the purposes of self-development, behavior correction, etc. In this situation, the psychologist is responsible for the correctness of the data, for the ethical deontological aspects of the “diagnosis” and only partially for how this diagnosis will be used by the client. Although there is no strict correspondence between the nature of the task and the psychodiagnostic method, it is still possible to note some preference for certain methods in certain cases.

Thus, in situations 1 and 2, methods should provide “strategic” information about the client, i.e., provide a more or less long-term forecast, they should also allow the correlation of the subject with other people, i.e., involve standardization. Therefore, in these situations, objective tests and questionnaire tests are most widely used, and the latter are sometimes based not on psychological categories, but on the categories of the customer’s conceptual system. These are, for example, the well-known Minnesota Multifactor Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its modifications.

In situation 3, information is often designed to regulate the tactics of the practical work of the psychologist himself; correlation with the “norm” is less important, therefore ideographic techniques, projective and dialogic methods are more often used.

In situation 4, the main requirement for methods is the ease of translating the data obtained with their help into the language of the person being examined. This condition is satisfied, for example, by the 16 PF test by R. Cattell, the Keirsey questionnaire (Myers-Briggs typology), but does not correspond well to the MMPI, the diagnostic descriptions of which are designed for a psychiatrist.

1.3. Regulatory requirements

The deployment of practical work of psychologists in various fields of production, medicine, education, which requires the use of psychodiagnostic techniques, acutely raises the question of the normative regulation of such practice. We are talking about a system of specific requirements for developers and users of methods.

Until recently, the practical and research application of methods was poorly differentiated; this slowed down the development of a set of regulatory requirements (standards) for the practical use of tests and non-standardized procedures. Regulatory regulation must be accompanied by the development of a system of rules that would be ahead of practice and give it guidelines and prospects for the future.

Requirements for psychodiagnostic literature and methodological materials

The developer and user of methods interact primarily through methodological literature. Standard requirements for the design of manuals, guidelines, letters and other methodological literature have been adopted as directive documents by societies of psychologists in a number of countries.

It is advisable to distinguish between the range of requirements for documents of different types:

♦ to research literature published in scientific journals, collections and monographs;

♦ to review and analytical guides and reference publications covering procedural and quantitative, as well as content-theoretical aspects of the application of a certain technique or a certain class of techniques;

♦ to “available methodological materials”, directly instructing the user in the application of the methodology and containing stimulus material, instructions, texts of tasks, keys, norms, rules of interpretation; popular publications on psychodiagnostics.

Current page: 1 (book has 32 pages in total) [available reading passage: 21 pages]

E.S. Romanova
Psychodiagnostics
Tutorial

Approved by the Council on Psychology of the UMO for classical university education as teaching aid for students of higher educational institutions studying in the field and specialties of psychology

Reviewers:

V.A. Ivannikov, Doctor of Psychology Sciences, prof., corresponding member. RAO,

V.D. Shadrikov, Doctor of Psychology sciences, prof., academician of the Russian Academy of Education

Part I. Psychodiagnostics – theoretical and methodological aspects

Section 1. Subject and tasks of psychodiagnostics

1.1. Subject of psychodiagnostics

Psychological diagnostics studies ways to recognize and measure individual psychological characteristics of a person(properties of his personality and characteristics of intelligence). Recognition and measurement are carried out using psychodiagnostic methods.

As a theoretical discipline, general psychodiagnostics considers:

♦ patterns of making valid and reliable diagnostic judgments;

♦ rules of “diagnostic inferences”, with the help of which the transition is made from signs or indicators of a certain mental state, structure, process to a statement of the presence and severity of these psychological “variables”.

Sometimes such rules are relatively simple, sometimes quite complex, in some cases they are “built-in” into the diagnostic tool itself, in others they require special work with diagnostic indicators - standard comparison of profiles, calculation of integral indicators, comparison with alternative diagnostic tests, expert interpretation, nomination and discarding hypotheses.

Psychodiagnostics is closely related to the relevant subject areas of psychological science: general psychology, medical, developmental, social, etc. The phenomena, properties and features studied by the listed sciences are measured using psychodiagnostic methods. The results of psychodiagnostic measurements can show not only the presence of a particular property, the degree of its expression, the level of development, they can also act as a way to verify the truth of theoretical and psychological constructs of various psychological directions.

1.2. Psychodiagnostic tasks

General psychodiagnostics is to a certain extent abstracted from specific diagnostic tasks that arise in various particular areas of psychodiagnostics. However, the psychologist must be aware of these tasks, since they significantly determine the limitations in the use of methods. Specificity manifests itself not only in relation to tasks, but also to psychodiagnostic situations in general. This is discrimination client situation And examination situations.

In the first situation, a person turns to a psychologist for help, he willingly cooperates, tries to follow the instructions as accurately as possible, and has no conscious intentions to embellish himself or falsify the results.

In the second, a person knows that he is being examined, tries to pass the “exam,” and to do this, he quite consciously controls his behavior and his answers so as to appear in the most advantageous light (or achieve his goal even at the cost of simulation, deviations and frustration).

In a client situation, much less stringent requirements can be placed on a diagnostic tool regarding its protection from falsification due to a conscious strategy than in an examination situation.

Psychodiagnostic tasks (and psychodiagnostic situations in general) can also be distinguished from the point of view of who will use diagnostic data and how and what is the responsibility of the psychodiagnostician in choosing ways to intervene in the situation of the subject. Let us briefly indicate these situations.

1. The data is used by a related specialist to make a non-psychological diagnosis or formulate an administrative decision. This situation is typical for the use of psychodiagnostic data in medicine. The psychologist makes a judgment about the specific characteristics of thinking, memory, and personality of the patient, and the doctor makes a medical diagnosis. The psychologist is not responsible either for the diagnosis or for what kind of treatment the doctor will provide to the patient.

The same scheme applies to the use of psychodiagnostic data in psychodiagnostics at the request of the court, a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric examination, psychodiagnostics of the professional competence of an employee or professional suitability at the request of the administration.

2. The data is used by the psychodiagnostician himself to make a psychological diagnosis, although intervention in the situation of the subject is carried out by a specialist of a different profile. This is, for example, the situation of psychodiagnostics in relation to the search for the causes of school failure: the diagnosis is psychological (or psychological-pedagogical) in nature, and the work to implement it is carried out by teachers, parents, and other educators.

3. The data is used by the psychodiagnostician himself to make a psychological diagnosis, and the latter serves as the basis for it(or the basis for the actions of his fellow psychologist) to develop ways of psychological influence. This is the situation of psychodiagnostics in the conditions of psychological consultation.

4. Diagnostic data is used by the person being examined for the purposes of self-development, behavior correction, etc. In this situation, the psychologist is responsible for the correctness of the data, for the ethical deontological aspects of the “diagnosis” and only partially for how this diagnosis will be used by the client. Although there is no strict correspondence between the nature of the task and the psychodiagnostic method, it is still possible to note some preference for certain methods in certain cases.

Thus, in situations 1 and 2, methods should provide “strategic” information about the client, i.e., provide a more or less long-term forecast, they should also allow the correlation of the subject with other people, i.e., involve standardization. Therefore, in these situations, objective tests and questionnaire tests are most widely used, and the latter are sometimes based not on psychological categories, but on the categories of the customer’s conceptual system. These are, for example, the well-known Minnesota Multifactor Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its modifications.

In situation 3, information is often designed to regulate the tactics of the practical work of the psychologist himself; correlation with the “norm” is less important, therefore ideographic techniques, projective and dialogic methods are more often used.

In situation 4, the main requirement for methods is the ease of translating the data obtained with their help into the language of the person being examined. This condition is satisfied, for example, by the 16 PF test by R. Cattell, the Keirsey questionnaire (Myers-Briggs typology), but does not correspond well to the MMPI, the diagnostic descriptions of which are designed for a psychiatrist.

1.3. Regulatory requirements

The deployment of practical work of psychologists in various fields of production, medicine, education, which requires the use of psychodiagnostic techniques, acutely raises the question of the normative regulation of such practice. We are talking about a system of specific requirements for developers and users of methods.

Until recently, the practical and research application of methods was poorly differentiated; this slowed down the development of a set of regulatory requirements (standards) for the practical use of tests and non-standardized procedures. Regulatory regulation must be accompanied by the development of a system of rules that would be ahead of practice and give it guidelines and prospects for the future.

Requirements for psychodiagnostic literature and methodological materials

The developer and user of methods interact primarily through methodological literature. Standard requirements for the design of manuals, guidelines, letters and other methodological literature have been adopted as directive documents by societies of psychologists in a number of countries.

It is advisable to distinguish between the range of requirements for documents of different types:

♦ to research literature published in scientific journals, collections and monographs;

♦ to review and analytical guides and reference publications covering procedural and quantitative, as well as content-theoretical aspects of the application of a certain technique or a certain class of techniques;

♦ to “available methodological materials”, directly instructing the user in the application of the methodology and containing stimulus material, instructions, texts of tasks, keys, norms, rules of interpretation; popular publications on psychodiagnostics.

1. Scientific communications. Should cover: the theoretical foundations of the methodology (concept and methodological technique), the method of development and empirical justification, research data on the representativeness, reliability, and validity of the scale of test indicators (correlation coefficients, regression and factor weights). For readers, a scientific report may provide “samples”, individual examples of test tasks, which allow them to illustrate the principles on which the methodology is based. Scientific reports should not cover: for methods with professional restrictions (“p-methods”) - the full text of tasks, keys, test standards, detailed instructions for implementation and interpretation. The author of a scientific report should speak about all this information only indirectly, using references to “instructional” literature distributed among specialists. A scientific report may contain comprehensive descriptions of techniques, knowledge of which by non-professionals (and their possible use by non-professionals) cannot cause damage to specific people or the psychodiagnostic potential of the technique itself. This class of techniques is proposed to be conditionally designated by the term “open techniques” (“o-techniques”).

The author of a scientific communication has the right to determine the status of the method he has developed as an open method, but any modifications or adaptations of a method already defined as a professional “p-method” must be covered in scientific communications in accordance with the specified requirements.

2. Reference and methodological publications. These publications may contain instructional materials, including the text of assignments (questions), keys, norms, but under one fundamental condition - the publication is given the “I” status of a publication for specialists, ensuring its distribution among readers who have the necessary psychological training.

3. Instructional documents. They contain a description of the technique that ensures its adequate use in strict accordance with the standards: diagnostic subject, scope of application, population of subjects, application procedure. The description must be provided with detailed information about the procedure for developing the methodology and the data obtained on reliability and validity. The given test norms must be accompanied by an unambiguous description of the standardization sample and the nature of the diagnostic situation in the examination: voluntary participation of subjects who unselfishly cooperate with a psychologist to assist the study (“scientific cooperation”), participation of paid subjects (“paid participation”), use of the methodology during the inquiry subject to receive advisory assistance (“client situation”), the use of the technique during a compulsory (continuous) administrative examination (“examination situation”).

Reference publications and instructional materials must be reviewed periodically (at a certain interval, depending on the type of technique), since the conditions for using techniques inevitably change over time, and, consequently, the psychometric properties change.

Reference and instructional materials must clearly formulate the requirements for the professional status of the user of the technique.

Instructional materials must be passed objective tests for the unambiguity of the instructions specified in them: a trial group of users of the method (test) must send copies of protocols based on the survey results to the author of the manual, on the basis of which the author must ensure the identity of the standards of the author's version of the method and those characteristics of the method that are identified when used by users of the manual. The last requirement is of fundamental importance for methods that involve significant participation of “expert” assessment (instructions for content analysis, for interpreting the results of a projective technique, semi-standardized interview, etc.).

Test scoring and interpretation procedures must be described with unambiguous clarity such that identical results can be obtained when the same protocols are processed by different users of the manual.

It is preferable for test users to include and use local test norms (versus non-population specific ones).

Section 2. History of the development of psychodiagnostics

2.1. Development of practical psychodiagnostics

Francis Galton in 1883 he published a voluminous monograph, which contains descriptions of a number of standardized tests he developed to assess sensory and psychomotor abilities. Thanks to this, the idea of ​​differential psychology, put forward by him back in 1869, is put on the rails of practically feasible mass surveys.

In the early 1890s. Emil Kraepelin puts forward the idea of ​​applying the methods of experimental psychology to the problems of psychological and psychiatric diagnostics. His student E. Oern is the first to implement this idea in practice in relation to the assessment of intellectual abilities. The techniques he used covered mental functions such as perception, memory, association and motor skills.

The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. are characterized by the rapid development of methods for psychological diagnostics of various intellectual characteristics of an individual, and this entire direction as a whole receives in specialist circles the general name of mentimetry or intelligence measurement.

In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus publishes a message about a method he developed for testing the ability to remember missing words in a text. In fact, this was the first group test of thinking ability.

In 1908 Alfred Binet And Thomas Simon published the main version of their "Metric Scale of Intelligence", which provided a measurement of the so-called mental age of an individual. In 1912 William Stern proposed measuring a child's intelligence in terms of IQ(CI), calculated by dividing mental age by chronological age. In 1916, professor at Stanford University Lewis Theremin completed the revision of the Binet-Simon scale in relation to the conditions of English-speaking countries 1
Under the leadership of L. Theremin, two more revisions of this scale were subsequently published, known as the Stanford-Binet scale, 1937 and Stanford-Binet scale, 1960.

This was the first individual test of “general intelligence” to find widespread practical use; he was in one way or another the prototype of all the mental tests that followed him.

In 1910, Russian psychologist G. I. Rossolimo published his methodology for assessing various mental abilities based on taking into account intra-individual differences, that is, by constructing individual “psychological profiles”. This method became widespread both in our country and abroad, anticipating by several decades the idea of ​​so-called test batteries, which are currently very popular in Western countries.

During the First World War, a special commission of the American Psychological Association, headed Robert Yerkes, developed the Army Intelligence Test. This was the first group test of general intelligence. Based on its application, “intelligent sorting” of 1 million 727 thousand recruits of the American army was carried out. A similar situation is developing in the Russian army: first during the Russo-Japanese War, and then during the First World War, an almost universal medical and psychological examination of recruits and junior officers was introduced into the army. Psychological tests began to conquer the European and American continents.

Deployment of test developments abroad

The rapid march of mentimetry and psychological testing across these two continents continues in the 20th century, primarily covering English-speaking countries.

At the end of the 1930s. David Wexler publishes its methods of individual testing: a scale for measuring the intelligence of adults (last revision dates back to 1955); in 1949 - a scale for measuring the intelligence of adolescents and in 1967 - a scale for measuring the intelligence of preschool and early preschool children. The main advantage of these methods compared to the Binet-Simon scale is their construction as “batteries”, consisting of several subtests, which makes it possible to determine CI in relation to individual mental abilities.

During the Second World War in the United States, various types of testing covered over 9 million people, most of whom were military personnel. The Air Force created a special test battery to classify flight school cadets (pilot, bombardier, navigator). The Army Intelligence Test was the prototype for many subsequent group "general intelligence" tests, of which the most widely used batteries today are the Differential Aptitude Tests and the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. The last of these batteries is used to select applicants to universities and colleges. About 2 million people pass through it every year. In general, in the early 1960s. In general education and higher education in the United States, about 250 million units of various tests were used annually, most of which were intellectual tests.

A similar situation is developing in Europe. Thus, in England in 1972, the National Foundation for Educational Research alone supplied schools with about 3.5 million units of various intellectual tests.

By the end of the 1920s. the use of various mental tests (primarily group tests) has become so widespread in the West that many authors use concepts such as “boom”, “epidemic”, “psychosis” to characterize this phenomenon. And the point here is not only in the scale of application of test methods - the main thing is that the overwhelming majority of these methods were (and still are) of a clearly empirical nature. Although a lot of creativity and ingenuity was invested in their design, nevertheless, as a rule, they do not have any developed theoretical basis. This concerns not only understanding the very essence of the test method, but also revealing the content and characteristics of those mental properties that are selected as the subject of testing in a particular test. The authors of many intelligence tests openly stated that they were not concerned about this issue, the main thing was the presence of a more or less close correlation with the predicted behavior.

The corresponding “credo” was formulated at one time L. Theremin, who tried to justify “blind” testing of the mind with an analogy with the use of electricity: although, he wrote, the nature of this phenomenon has not really been revealed, nevertheless it is not only successfully measured, but also widely used for practical purposes. And today, despite the rapidly growing understanding by foreign testologists of the role of theoretical knowledge, this illegitimate mechanistic analogy still influences individual authors, such famous ones as, for example, G. Eysenck .

Based on the use of intelligence tests and in accordance with the theory of measuring “innate intelligence” in the USA, England and other European countries, “intellectual segregation” of schoolchildren is actually carried out on a large scale. At the same time, the division into “intellectual strata” becomes almost irreversible: the shortcomings of the theory seemed to be completely compensated for by the enormous volume of statistical material, creating the illusion of objectivity of measurements. The revelation by progressive psychologists of the theory of measuring “innate intelligence” significantly stimulated protests by wide sections of the public against the intellectual segregation of schoolchildren, since the excessive and perverted use of “mentimetry” led to the fact that children of the lower and low-income strata of the population were practically deprived of the opportunity to receive a full-fledged secondary education, without speaking of the highest. As a result, in the 1960s. Municipal authorities of New York and some other US cities were forced to issue a directive to stop using group intelligence tests in schools. Nevertheless, in a disguised form, “intelligent selection” continues to be practiced in both the USA and England.

Over the past decades, foreign testologists have published a number of fundamental works on “test theory”. However, what this term denotes is actually very far from psychological theory. As rightly noted Anne Anastasi, the above “test theory” is not a psychological, but a mathematical-statistical theory that covers such issues as the nature of test scores, scales and methods for determining the reliability of tests, etc. We can verify this ourselves by reading the works mentioned above, as well as special works on the history of psychological testing.

The experience of using mentalimetric tests quite convincingly shows that the “direct application” of particular psychological theories in the absence of suitable personality models that integrate them, as well as the lack of suitable models of behavior, where the psyche acts as a regulator of behavior, leads to a negative practical result, despite the apparent justified reliability of mathematical, “technological” models of the so-called test theory. All this means the need for a special analysis of the relationships and connections between “models” of very different kinds and quality: models of the psyche as a regulator of behavior, models of personality as an integrator of the psyche, models of data representation and models of their processing.

Even after various theories of child mental development began to take shape (for example, L. S. Vygotsky , J. Piaget , J. Bruner), foreign mentality continued to remain a unique mathematical and statistical discipline, isolated from the achievements of psychological science.

Tracing the history of mentalimetric thought from A. Binet to this day, having examined in detail the work L. Theremin, C. Spearman, L. Thurstone, D. Wexler, J. Guilford, J. Piaget, one of the historians of testology comes to the conclusion that “not a single theory or model has become the basis for any mental test, with the exception of perhaps the works J. Guilford» .

Presence of names in this list A. Binet, L. Theremin, D. Wexler may seem somewhat unexpected, since these authors went down in history as the creators of very popular test methods. The paradox, however, lies elsewhere: not one of them based the test he created on any clearly formulated concept of personality, limiting himself only to private theoretical considerations, although each was quite famous for his theoretical works.

C. Spearman And J. Piaget were not involved in constructing tests at all, but the first of them widely used test techniques to substantiate his theory of “general (general) factor a". Attempts to develop a number of tests based on experimental techniques J. Piaget(and therefore on his concept of mental development) have not yet led to the creation of such tools that would go beyond the walls of research laboratories. As for J. Guilford, then, although he based his tests on a certain theoretical concept, the latter, however, turned out to be insufficiently viable from a strictly pragmatic point of view.

This does not directly apply to the so-called personality tests, since they, as a rule, have a more solid theoretical basis (although here, in a number of cases, we are faced with examples of “bare empiricism”).

As already noted, the history of the construction of personality tests dates back to 1912, when Edward Thorndike began to develop questionnaires to determine the prevailing interests of an individual. But the first truly personal test that received practical application (and at the same time had a significant influence on the subsequent development of “self-descriptive” tests) was the “personality inventory” (inventory) to identify neuroses in military personnel, proposed in 1919 Robert Woodworth .

If we continue our review of the history of development and the emergence of personality tests of the blank type, then the chronological list of the most significant methods will look like this:

♦ 1927 – Edward Strong publishes his Card of Vocational Interests;

♦ 1926 - Gordon Allport's dominance-submission test appears;

♦ 1928 – The Personal Values ​​Test, developed by Gordon Allport and Philip Vernon, is published;

♦ 1940 - S. Hathaway and D. McKinley publish their Minnesota Multifactor Personality Inventory - MMPI - one of the most popular blank tests in the West.

From the so-called personality-activity tests Let us note as pioneering developments two techniques of the projective type: the test of colored inkblots, developed Hermann Rorschach, and the TAT thematic apperception test, the authors of which are G. Murray And S. D. Morgan .

Projective techniques are aimed at measuring personality traits and intelligence. They have a number of features that make them significantly different from standardized methods, namely:

♦ features of the stimulus material;

♦ features of the task assigned to the respondent;

♦ features of processing and interpretation of results.

1. A distinctive feature of the stimulus material of projective techniques is its ambiguity, uncertainty, and lack of structure, which is a necessary condition for the implementation of the projection principle. In the process of interaction of the individual with the stimulus material, its structuring occurs, during which the individual projects the features of his inner world - needs, conflicts, anxiety, etc.

2. A relatively unstructured task that allows for an unlimited variety of possible answers is one of the main features of projective techniques. Testing using projective techniques is disguised testing, since the respondent cannot guess what exactly in his answer is the subject of interpretation by the experimenter. Projective methods are less susceptible to falsification than questionnaires based on information about the individual.

3. There is a problem of standardization of projective techniques. Some methods do not contain a mathematical apparatus for objective processing of the results obtained and do not contain standards. They are characterized by a qualitative approach to the study of personality, rather than a quantitative one, as is the case with psychometric tests, and therefore adequate methods for testing their reliability and giving them validity have not yet been developed.

Since the 1930s The Rorschach test was widely introduced into the research and clinical diagnostic work of psychologists, and the first methodological manuals were published. It is important to emphasize that the use of the Rorschach test as a diagnostic tool was accompanied by a clear, deep reflection of diagnostic tasks and theoretical models for justifying the test based on Marxist methodology. Based on the basic principles about the biased nature of mental activity, specific theoretical justifications were built on the basis of such categories as “attitude”, “personal component” of perception, “individual personality style”.

Concluding a brief review and assessing the current state of foreign testing, it should be noted that to date it has in its arsenal several hundred different methods: on the one hand, purely instrumental ones, designed to measure narrow special abilities, and on the other hand, various complex tests of the so-called character traits, “general” and analytical, individual and group, blank and instrumental, self-descriptive and activity-based (the latter, in turn, are divided into situational and projective). Publications in which these techniques are described and commented on number literally in the thousands. However, as we will see below, among this sea of ​​publications, works that analyze the theoretical aspects of the test method in sufficient depth represent tiny islands.