According to the authors stated that for psychometricians the term bias “is a factor inherent in a test that systematically prevents accurate, impartial measurement” (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018, p. 192). Furthermore, the authors stated that the term bias suggests systematic variation (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). According to the text, a test is deemed bias if a portion of its variances derives from factors that are unrelated to the performance on the criterion being measured; subsequently, a group of test takers will have performed differently than another (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). Thus, the others stated that some tests are found to be bias based on the design research study instead of the design of the test (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018).

Moreover, the textbook mentioned that the best way to prevent a test from being bias is during test development one should be aware of how to prevent a test from being bias (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). The authors mentioned that “a procedure called estimated true score transformations represent one of many available post hoc remedies” for test bias (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018, p. 193).

According to the textbook, a test fairness is rooted in issues involving values (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). The book defines fairness “in a psychometric context as the extent to which a test is used in an impartial, just, and equitable way (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018, p. 196). The text stated that for some reasonable person judgment, a test might blatantly view as being unfair (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018, p. 196).  A test may be deemed unfair due to the fact that they discriminate against a certain group of people (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). Nonetheless, the authors stated that “The test user strives for fairness in the way the test is used. Society strives for fairness in test use by means of legislation, judicial decisions, and administrative regulations” (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018, p. 196).

According to the text, CTT is widely used and accepted as the model in the psychometric literature of today (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). Although CTT is said to be an easier model to understand and that it has its advantages and disadvantages, in my opinion I believe the IRT is preferential for responding to questions about a test’s fairness. The reason why is because as per the authors the assumptions may be characterized as being weak for the CTT; whereas an IRT method may be viewed as a strong, robust, rigorous and hard (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). Some believe that the IRT is a worthy successor to CTT (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018).

Moreover, the IRT refers to a family of methods and theories which has a variety of models that are designed to handle certain assumptions concerning data characteristics (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). Furthermore, The IRT differs a lot from the CTT, and an IRT makes no assumption concerning the frequency of a test scores distribution (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). The text also stated that ” Some IRT models have very specific and stringent assumptions about the underlying distribution. In one group of IRT models developed by the Danish mathematician Georg Rasch, each item on the test is assumed to have an equivalent relationship with the construct being measured by the test” (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018, P. 167). Lastly, the text states that the IRT model has some psychometric advantages especially for large-scale test publishers, academic and commercial test developers (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). According to the authors, this model is found to have an increase in as it pertains to the application of standardized test questionnaires used and professional licensing examinations (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018).

References

Cohen, R. J., Swerdlik, M. (2018). Psychological Testing and Assessment. [Capella]. Retrieved from https://capella.vitalsource.com/#/books/1260303195/

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Unit8Disc1Lifespan

Response Guidelines

Read as many of your peers’ posts as time allows, and respond to at least two of them. Try to choose posts that have had the fewest responses.

Your responses to other learners are expected to be substantive in nature and to reference the assigned readings, as well as other theoretical, empirical, or professional literature to support your views and writings. Use the following critique guidelines:

The clarity and completeness of your peer’s post.

The demonstrated ability to apply theory to practice.

The credibility of the references.

The structure and style of the written post.

Peer 1Raymond Lam

Balte’s theory on the gains and losses in middle adulthood revolves around the idea of biological and cultural supports.  Adequate parenting, nutrition, education, and protection are examples of some of these (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). In middle adulthood, biological supports such as hearing and vision can start to weaken (loss), but cultural supports such as postformal thinking may be reinforced (gain).  

                The processes of growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss can be adaptive for development at this stage because they are adaptations. Growth is adapting through self-improvement. Maintenance is adapting by maintaining the concept of self through hardship and struggle. Regulation of loss is adapting by adjusting expectations and settling for a lower standard (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015).

                In middle adulthood, people also experience age-graded and history-graded changes. Age-graded changes include physical changes like hair loss and skin wrinkling, as well as cognitive changes like intellectual declines and learning things slower. History-graded changes depends on the individual’s sociocultural context. For example, a person who grew up in poverty could be more frugal than a person who grew up wealthy.

Srivastava, John, Gosling, & Potter (2003) also find that personality can change during this period, with a significant result found for the increase of conscientiousness and agreeableness. Additionally,  Merline, Jager, & Schulenberg (2008) find that factors such as parental drinking, risk taking, and use of cigarettes could predict heavy drinking during the middle adulthood period, signaling a negative change.

Broderick, P.C., & Blewitt, P. (2015). THE LIFE SPAN: Human Development for Helping Professionals (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson. 

Merline, A., Jager, J. and Schulenberg, J. E. (2008), Adolescent risk factors for adult alcohol use and abuse: stability and change of predictive value across early and middle adulthood. Addiction, 103, 84–99. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2008.02178.x

Srivastava, S., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2003). Development of personality in early and middle adulthood: Set like plaster or persistent change? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(5), 1041-1053. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.5.1041

Peer2 Kenwyn Avery

Middle Adulthood-Gains & Losses

Balte’s theory on gains and losses is that gains are obvious early in life and losses are obvious later in life. Post formal thinking and close relationships are gains early in life while the beginnings stages of losing sensory abilities, immune function, and relationships happen later in life (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). The older the adult the more time and practice it takes to attain learning gains and to some extent some of those gains may not ever be attainable no matter how much the individual trains (Baltes, Staudinger, and Ulman, 1999).

Process of Growth, Maintenance, and Regulation of Loss

The adaptive development during middle adulthood has three stages, growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss. These are a part of development from infancy through old age. In middle adulthood the balance is shifting between all three and successful development is established with there is a balance between losses with maintenance and growth (Broderick et al., 2015).

Growth, according to Baltes et al., (1999), is defined as behaviors aimed at reaching a higher level of functioning and adaptive capacity. According to Broderick & Blewitt (2015) lifespan development theory defines development as a process of adapting to the constant flux of influences in our lives. Adding new characteristics, understanding, and skills to our behavior repertoire. An example would be learning a new task at work resulting in growth of knowledge and in skill.

Maintenance is finding ways to continue functioning at the same level in the face of challenges or restoring functions after suffering a loss. An example of maintenance could be an employee still working as an Accountant while going through a divorce.

Regulation of loss is reorganizing the way we behave. It involves adjusting our expectations and accepting a lower level of functioning. Much like the texts example, my mother worked with kids for over thirty years and as she aged and her memory abilities began to fade, she came up with new ways of remembering all of the children’s names by placing picture/name boards in the rooms at the beginning of the year. It was less work and stress and her way of adapting to her new level of functioning.

Age-Graded and History-Graded Changes

Broderick and Blewitt (2015) explains the details of age-graded and history graded changes as follows. Development during the age-graded changes are physical, cognitive, and relative importance. During the physical stage there are body changes, adolescing to senescing, wrinkling, hair loss, and health changes. During cognitive changes, intelligence becomes fluid and crystallized. Fluid is based on how well the hardware f the nervous system is functioning, and crystalized is storing the skills and information acquired over life.

Development during the history-graded changes involves historical events that affect our lives. Year of birth marks the entry into a cohort of peers that accompany you through age-graded developmental changes with the context of a specific set of historical events. Development during middle adulthood at this time is influenced by the history of events past. Negative events early in life postpone positive adult decisions and vice versa. Living in a world that is less favorable to their positive development, may discourage improvement.

References

Broderick & Blewitt (2015) Life Span, The: Human Development for Helping Professionals. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Publishing.

Baltes, P. B., Staudinger,U.M., & Ulman, L. (1999). Lifespan psychology: Theory and application to intellectual functioning. Annual Review of Psyhology, 50, 471-507

EVALUATING RESEARCH This Discussion should consist of roughly 300 words

As mentioned in the unit introduction, at the core of psychology in practice is the use of techniques, strategies, and best practices based on the highest-quality research available (APA, 2014). It is not enough to locate research related to your topic. The research must be relevant to your particular problem or situation and present valid findings that you may apply in the field.

For this discussion, respond to the following questions:

• What 3 peer-reviewed articles did you find related to your research question? Give a short summary and provide the APA citation for each article.

• How did you determine whether an article was relevant to your research question?

• What strategies did you use to ensure the articles you located were worthy of use in psychology practice?

• What criteria did you use to evaluate the authority, credibility, and scholarliness of the articles within the field of psychology?

If you did not consider these questions as you completed your research, go back and evaluate the articles you located. Use the tools listed in the resources for assistance. If you had any trouble evaluating research, use this discussion to receive support from your peers and instructor to work through your challenges.

ASSIGNMENT – PREPARATION

Choosing a research topic is not a trivial matter. While a great many topics in psychology may be of interest, when you put forth the time and effort to research and write on a topic, it is best to focus on one that will help you learn more about your specialization area.

In this study, you will further explore your interests and passions in psychology by reflecting on how you would use research as a practitioner, then:

• Select an important topic relevant to your area of specialization in psychology.

• Formulate a more specific research question.

This activity will lay the groundwork for the unit discussions and the remaining assignments in this course.

Complete the following:

• Skim through the Select Topics page of the PSY5002 & PSY5005 Research Guide. Scroll down to the Suggested Specialization Topics section for topic ideas and select the ones that are most interesting to you and relevant to your specialization.

• Review the Topics section in the APA Web site for supplementary ideas for topics relevant to your psychology vision and goals.

• Review the Improve Your Topic page for additional explanation and resources to help you clarify the task of topic selection and locate articles.

• Consider the following questions to explore further ideas if you have not found any inspiring topics in these resources:

• Can you remember an experience in your personal or professional life that you did not understand or would like to explore further?

• Have you read anything in a discussion post, your courseroom, a textbook, or a course reading that you wanted to learn more about?

• Have you observed anything unusual or intriguing recently (on television, online, in the newspaper, or in your job) that piqued your curiosity?

• Rank the ideas you came up with and select the most important topic to pursue during the course. Keep your list of unused topics for future courses. You will have many opportunities for research throughout your program.

Now that you have chosen a topic, your next step is to formulate a single clear, concise, and specific research question related to the topic. The question should not be so narrow that it is difficult to research, but if it is too broad or multifaceted your research task may seem endless.

Use the four Ws—who, what, where, and why—to think about how to define and narrow your area of inquiry:

• Who: Define the population you are concerned with in terms such as age, ethnic background, special characteristics, or other factors.

• What: Focus on a particular issue (such as violence, family issues, or poverty) the population facing.

• Where: Determine a specific type of setting where the issue would be observed, or where an intervention would impact the target population. Private practice, clinic, school, or others?

• Why: What could be possible benefits of this research?

As an example, if your topic is adolescent depression, your research question might be: “What biological factors are associated with adolescent depression?” Try to state your research question in a single sentence that you will answer in your research and writing.

 

After you formulate the research question, list the reasons why this question is important.

 

ALL WORK MUST BE COMPLETELY ORIGINAL AS IT GOES THROUGH A TURNITIN PROGRAM

 

Working effectively with individuals means building relationships. As a social worker, there are certain qualities, such as empathy, warmth, and genuineness, that help you develop rapport with clients. However, even when you appropriately utilize your micro skills, rapport building can be difficult with some clients. Challenges may include client hostility, silence, a request for self-disclosure, or the necessity of using confrontation. Social workers need to develop skills to appropriately work through these challenges.

For this Discussion, you begin developing these skills through practice and analysis of practice.

To prepare: Watch the Parker video. In the video, the clients express hostility toward each other, as well as toward the social worker. In addition, Stephanie asks the social worker for self-disclosure when she asks, “Wouldn’t you?” and “You really think you can fix that?” The scene ends with the client and social worker falling into silence. Consider the challenges depicted in the video. How would you respond?

 

Kirst-Ashman, K. K., & Hull, G. H., Jr. (2018). Understanding generalist practice (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. 

• Chapter 2, “Practice Skills for Working with Individuals” (pp. 59–101)

 

Knight, C. (2012). Social workers’ attitudes towards and engagement in self-disclosure. Clinical Social Work Journal, 40(3), 297–306. doi:10.1007/s10615-012-0408-z

Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases.

https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201950_27/MS_SOCW/SOCW_6101_WC/artifacts/USW1_SOCW_6101_MSW_Sessions_Case_Histories.pdf

Laureate Education (Producer). (2013g). Sessions: Parker (episode 1) [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author. 

 Throughout this unit, you have learned that certain links exist between emotions, motivation, and stress. In fact, if one does not handle his or her stress effectively, numerous health issues could arise. For this assignment, you are to compose a reflection paper in which you examine a current or past stressful event in your life. You must embrace Selye’s general adaptation syndrome (GAS) and describe your reactions to the stressful event during each stage. You should describe the various facial expressions that you displayed as you progressed through each stage as well. Be sure also to address the following questions: What coping strategies did you embrace to help solve the problem? How was your professional life affected by the stressor? How does Maslow’s hierarchy of needs relate to your stressor? What motivated you to solve the problem? Did you experience additional conflicts with other individuals as you endured this life trial? Tips for writing your reflection paper: Introduction: This is meant to give a concise overview of the featured stressful event and is usually one paragraph in length. In your introduction, you will reveal the featured stressful event that you will examine for this paper. Summary: This contains your description of the required areas listed above in the opening statement, including Selye’s GAS, your facial expressions, coping strategies, professional impact, and relationship conflicts. Analysis: In this portion of the paper, you should provide information from the textbook to analyze the impact that the stressful event could have placed upon your health, future goals, and motivation. You may use sources identified from the CSU Online Library to assist your analysis efforts, but this is not required. Conclusion: This summarizes your final reflections for the featured topic. For instance, what implications have you uncovered during your research that you will apply to future stressful events? Your paper must be at least one page in length, not counting the title and reference pages, but it can be longer if necessary to address all aspects of the assignment. It should be formatted in APA style. You are required to utilize the textbook, but other sources may be used if needed. You may visit the CSU Online Library to identify a source that provides specific information on how this stressful issue could impact your health, future goals, and motivation. Any information from a source should be cited and referenced in APA style