Psychological Testing and Assessment

Psychological Testing and Assessment: An Introduction to Tests and Measurement is the standard-setting text that through seven editions has overviewed measurement in psychology with unrivaled depth, breadth, and clarity. Logically organized and lucidly written, this book acquaints readers with important historical, legal, ethical, and cultural issues, and then proceeds to provide readers with the information necessary to understand psychometric concepts such as reliability, validity, and utility. Through writing that effectively anchors abstract concepts to real-life applications--and through the use of innovative teaching tools such as "Just Think" questions and the "Everyday Psychometrics" features in the text--readers will come away with a well-rounded, working knowledge of psychometrics and the assessment enterprise in a contemporary, real world context.

Ronald Jay Cohen, Ph.D., ABPP, is a Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology in Clinical Psychology, and a Diplomate of the American Board of Assessment Psychology (ABAP). He is a New York State licensed psychologist, and a “scientist-practitioner” and “scholar-professional” in the finest traditions of each of those terms. During a long and gratifying professional career in which he has published numerous journal articles and books, Dr. Cohen has had the privilege of personally working alongside some of the luminaries in the field of psychological assessment,including David Wechsler (while Cohen was a clinical psychology intern at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York City) and Doug Bray (while working as an assessor for AT&T in its Management Progress Study). After serving his clinical psychology internship at Bellevue, Dr. Cohen was appointed Senior Psychologist there, and his clinical duties entailed not only psychological assessment but the supervision and training of others in this enterprise. Subsequently, as an independent practitioner in the New York City area, Dr. Cohen taught various courses at local universities on an adjunct basis, including undergraduate and graduate courses in psychological assessment.Asked by a colleague to conduct a qualitative research study for an advertising agency,Dr. Cohen would quickly become a sought-after qualitative research consultant with a client list of major companies and organizations―among them Paramount Pictures,Columbia Pictures, NBC Television, the Campbell Soup Company, Educational Testing Service, and the College Board. Dr. Cohen’s approach to qualitative research, referred to by him as dimensional qualitative research, has been emulated and written about by qualitative researchers around the world. Working as a consultant to one major company that wanted to learn more about its corporate culture, Dr. Cohen developed the Discussion of Organizational Culture (a qualitative research instrument discussed in Chapter 16). It was Dr. Cohen’s work in the area of qualitative assessment that led him to found the scholarly journal Psychology & Marketing, which in 2012 celebrated some 30 years of consecutive publishing with Dr. Cohen as editor-in-chief.