Category: Psychological tests

Totaled Recall: Is an Alzheimer’s Memory Screening Test Worth It?
Good read.
While Dementia is indicated in Alzheimer, all Dementia case need not necessarily be indicative of Alzheimer.
The disease is due to faulty or absence of communication between neurons in the brain because of decay.
This may be due to age,heredity or hedonistic habits or infection of the brain.
Psychological tests are not to be relied upon as they are in the evolving stage still and the tests themselves do not always lead to correct prognosis.Details are are available at ramanan50.wordpress.com under Psychological tests.
Right approach would be to consult the Family physician and relatives.
Best way to manage would be to provide those afflicted with it, would be to provide them help with understanding.
Story:
Alzheimer’s disease and its associated dementia can be a scary prospect for individuals and families faced with it. Between 2.4 million and 4.5 million Americans suffer from this debilitating, incurable disease, according to the National Institutes of Health. That figure is expected to rise as the baby boomers age.

Community memory screening events are becoming increasingly popular as individuals and their families seek to detect dementia in its earliest stages—before it destroys patients’ memories and thinking skills. But many physicians warn against these screenings, which are often ineffective when it comes to detecting dementia, and can leave test-takers feeling scared and powerless.

There are thousands of memory screening tests available, some self-administered online, some given in the community by health care professionals—usually in the form of a questionnaire. The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, the advocacy group that funds National Memory Screening Day, promotes screenings overseen by health care
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-an-alzheimers-memory-screening-test-worth-it&page=2&posted=1#comments
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17 Jun 2010
Psychological Tests for Employment-Intrusion into Privacy?
Psychological Tests are , at best , an educated guess work and no final word has been spoken on the veracity of the results obtained through these tests.They, right from early Stanford Test, are being constantly updated and the methodology adopted is open to question.They ignore ethnic,cultural backgrounds and the selection criteria of control group is also questionable.Also the factor of Heredity in behavior is not yet ascertained.You may read more on this in my blog filed under Psychological Tests.

A new book shows the power corporations wield over their employees has gone too far. It’s time to take action.
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Can They Do That? Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace. An AlterNet review of the book by Liliana Segura follows the excerpt.

Sibi Soroka was shocked. He had applied for a job as a security guard at the local Target to provide some steady income while he pursued his career as an actor. At the end of the process, he was required to take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a psychological test used by many employers. The tests included questions about his sex life, religious beliefs, intimate feelings about family members, and even his bathroom habits.

“I couldn’t believe anyone would ask me such personal questions,” Soroka said. “These are questions you wouldn’t even answer for your own mother, let alone some personnel director at a company.” The more he thought about it the more upset he became. When the company called him to offer him the job, he told them to find somebody else; he didn’t want to work for a company that treated people this way.

Soroka is not alone. An estimated 15 million Americans are required to take the MMPI every year, including two million people who are required to take it as part of applying for a job. Applicants who are forced to take the test range from doctors and priests to retail sales clerks. The test has been translated into 115 different languages, including Hmong, Turkish, and even sign language. The MMPI is only one of many psychological tests used by employers, According to the American Management Association, over 40 percent of employers nationwide use psychological tests, including eighty-nine of the Fortune 100.
http://www.alternet.org/story/145035/can_they_do_that_how_you_get_screwed_at_work
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17 Jan 2010
Standardised Tests
“LAST week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged standardized tests are flawed measures of student progress. But the problem is not so much the tests themselves — it’s the people scoring them.’NYT 27/09/09-TODD FARLEY

Comment:
Disagree.All the so called tests are based on general standardized tests arrived at by designing on the basis of general ability of testees for a group with certain parameters like education,parental background,social status, economic back ground, age etc.Based on common points tests are designed and presented to people.They are evaluated.
The issue here is these parameters themselves are interdependent-say economic position on cultural behavior,behavior on economic position,these two on genes or environment;environment is constituted by society and parents and they are dependent on environment, thus forming a vicious cycle. So these tests are at the very best indicative and do not really reflect the the individual for what he is.
In fact ,for example , Personality,Intelligence Perception, Attitudes are not exactly defined.They are open for discussion and no final word has been heard.
Interpretation has a subjective element as well,despite precautions as it can not be wholly eliminated.
On both counts tests are at best only indicative and nothing can replace individual’s evaluation by another matured person(even Maturity has to be defined).Period
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2 Oct 2009