This study consists of two parts: the first part is the establishment of a theoretical model of moral development and the second part is an empirical study which includes the construction of a new psychological test called The Moral Development Test (MDT). The proposed theory postulates the following three parameters to explain the fundamental nature of moral development: Basic Psychological Needs (Parameter N), Human Relationships (R) and Structures of Judgmeht (J). Different current theories are applied in the elaboration of the above three parameters: Humanistic Psychology particularly Maslow's Theory for N, Sociobiological Theory of Kinship for R and Cognitive-developmental theory for J. The theory is a 7-stage model. In addition, an attempt is made to employ the Chinese Tao Philosophy in the primitive establishment of a theoretical basis for the Ultimate Stage of Human Development i.e. Stage 7 in the theory. The derivation of the theory is mathematically oriented. The MDT is constructed mainly for validating the above theoretical model. Each form of the MDT consists of five or six hypothetical dilemmas. The questions for each dilemma are divided into two parts. Part I is used to test the Parameters N and R and Part II the Parameter J. It was found that the test-retest and internal consistency reliabilities of the major MDT indices (labelled as NRRJ and WNRRJ indices) were usually in the 0.80s to 0.90s. The face validity, convergent-divergent validity and the construct validity have been demonstrated to be good. In addition, results of cross-cultural analyses using the English (London) and Chinese (Hong Kong) samples also support the cultural universal hypothesis of the present theoretical model. Nevertheless, the MDT only explores features of moral development up to the fifth stage of the present 7-stage model.

The practice of assessing the attributes of people in relation to job and organizational requirements has long been regarded as being central to the profession of Industrial and Organisational Psychology (IO Psychology). Some have argued that it is in the area of individual assessment that the scientific training of IO psychologists is applied most extensively and that it is here where the dual role of the IO psychologist as a scientist-practitioner is most clearly evident. Despite the emphasis on the integration of science and practice in IO Psychology and IOP assessment in particular, there is evidence to suggest that the scientific model that underpins practice does not optimally serve this ideal. It is further apparent that several influential authors within the discipline have identified concerns and dissatisfaction with the status quo in this respect. In this study it is proposed that the existence of such concerns and dissatisfaction points to the need to reflect on the adequacy of the intellectual architecture that guides theory and practice in the field. The aim of this study is to explore the contribution of Action Science to the ideal of integrating theory and practice within the field of Industrial and Organisational Psychological assessment (IOP assessment). It is proposed that action science perspectives are particularly relevant to IOP assessment given its emphasis on the close coupling of thought and action, the enactment of scientific values in practice and the rigorous monitoring of such practice. Given that action science perspectives have not been explored in-depth in relation to IOP assessment, its philosophical and theoretical points of departure are described in detail. From an action science perspective, all deliberate action is based on an underlying theory – a theory of action - that specifies how to achieve intended consequences. The concept of a theory of action therefore serves as a vehicle to capture the integrative nature of thought and action. One of its central premises is that professional effectiveness requires of practitioners not only to become competent in taking action, but also to reflect critically on the theories of action that constitute their practice. As an epistemology of practice, action science provides abstract, normative models of action that guide such a process on the basis of internal criticism. In this process action is evaluated according to the values it claims to serve. At the same time these models identify pathways for transforming practice. In this study these principles are applied to the field of IOP assessment. Detailed attention is devoted to inferring the technical and interpersonal theory of action underlying IOP assessment from the literature in order to subject it to critical analysis. Diagnostic evidence is presented to illustrate the existence of inconsistencies and incongruities in the technical as well as interpersonal theories of action. Given the non-trivial consequences of these limitations, the critique is intentionally not euphemized or softened so as to identify potential sources of ineffectiveness on a rigorous basis. The analysis further shows that if practitioners are not vigilant to the limitations of their technology, they paradoxically run the risk of acting counter to the values they stand for when correctly implementing the prescriptions of the conventional theories of action. Drawing on action science principles as well as contributions from the organizational justice literature, an alternative theory of action for IOP assessment is proposed - the essence of which involves the reframing of validity as an action concept. A model is presented that depicts the various dimensions of validity as an action concept and guidelines are provided for operationalising it. It is argued that such an alternative theory of action provides guidelines for practice at the level of meta-praxis that will enable scientist-practitioners to act more consistently with their espoused values. Implications for practice, education and research are explored. It is concluded that action science offers an alternative, scientifically accountable model for practice that may be more consistent with the scientist-practitioner ideal of IO Psychology than the current scientific model to which it adheres. / Prof. I. v. W. Raubenheimer

[No abstract available] / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

[No abstract available] / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

[No abstract submitted] / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

This study reports the use of the performance scale of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and the Raven Progressive Matrices (1947) with three groups of children. These groups consisted of thirty children each. The experimental group was composed of Indian children hospitalized in the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital at Edmonton, Alberta. These children were selected as a sample of the Indian children from the large geographic area served by that hospital. The second group comprised hospitalized white children, selected on the basis of availability in hospital at the time of the testing program, and approximated the Indian group in socio-economic status and illness. The third group consisted of white children from intellectually privileged homes. The hypothesis was that the Indian group and the white groups would show less difference in scores obtained on the Raven Progressive Matrices than they would on the performance portion of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. The resultant data did not support this hypothesis. On the basis of the findings of the study, suggestions were made for further studies both with children and adults. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between the intelligence quotients yielded by two widely used individual tests of intelligence for children, namely, the Stanford-Binet, Form L, (1937 Revision) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). Until recently, the Binet has been used almost exclusively to ascertain the intelligence of the school-age child but, with the publication of the WISC in 1949, there has been an increasing trend toward using the tests either interchangeably or in conjunction with one another. In view of this development, an attempt to discover the relationship between the two scales would seem to be of much practical value. Although the two scales agree in assuming a "g" factor of intelligence, they differ as to the nature of their content and construction. The Stanford-Binet does not include any test items designated as measuring a particular skill, whereas the WISC is composed of twelve subtests, each supposed to tap a specific ability, and it yields a separate verbal and performance intelligence quotient. The two scales also differ in the manner of computing an intelligence quotient; the Binet scale depends upon a Mental Age concept of intelligence, whereas the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children is a point scale. This study attempted to ascertain to what extent the Stanford-Binet correlates with each of the WISC scales (Verbal, Performance and Full Scale) at three different age levels and three levels of intelligence, i.e., with subjects of Superior, Average and Retarded intelligence. It also attempted to find out what differences, if any, might occur between the Mean intelligence quotients yielded by the two tests in the above age and intellectual categories, and what direction these differences might take. Wechsler has objected to the Stanford-Binet deviations, which vary in size at difference age levels. At 6 years, the Binet standard deviation is unusually small, and at 12 years of age it is unusually large: the WISC standard deviations are the same size at each age level. It was hypothesized, therefore, that at the extremes of the intelligence distribution at ages 6 and 12 years, there should be differences between the Mean intelligence quotients yielded by the two tests in the direction of the size of the Binet standard deviations at these two age levels – a smaller Mean Binet than Mean WISC intelligence quotient at age 6 years, with a higher Mean intelligence quotient on the Binet at age 12 years. Subjects of these two ages, 6 and 12 years, were included in the experimental group in order to test this hypothesis, while the use of subjects of superior and retarded intelligence insured that extreme scores would occur. The sample of subjects of average intelligence, plus a group of 9-year-olds, were included for control and comparison in testing this hypothesis but also for their own research value. The sample was composed of 85 subjects - ten children in each age category of the Superior and Average intelligence groups; and in the Defective group, fourteen 12-year-olds, nine 9-year-olds, and four 6-year-olds. The positive correlations which occurred may be summarized as follows : 1. In the 9-year-old Superior group, the Stanford-Binet IQ correlated significantly with - (a) the WISC Verbal IQ at the 1% level of confidence; (b) the WISC Performance Scale IQ at the 5% level of confidence; (c) the WISC Full Scale IQ at the 1% level of confidence. 2. In the 9-year-old Average group, the Stanford-Binet IQ correlated significantly with - (a) the WISC Verbal Scale IQ at the 1% level of confidence; (b) the WISC Full Scale at the 5% level of confidence. Significant differences between the Mean IQs of the two tests may be summarized as follows : 1. In the group of Superior 9-year-olds, the Stanford-Binet IQs were significantly higher (at the 1% level of confidence) than the WISC Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQs. 2. In the group of Superior 12-year-olds, the Stanford-Binet IQs were significantly higher at the 1% level of confidence for the WISC Full and Verbal Scale IQs. 3- In the group of Average 12-year-olds, the Stanford-Binet is significantly higher at the 5% level of confidence than the WISC Verbal IQ. The major conclusions of this study are : 1. The obtained results are in essential agreement with the studies comparing the Wechsler adult scale and the Stanford-Binet. 2. There seems to be a consistent tendency in this study and others reviewed previously for lower correlations between the Stanford-Binet and WISC Performance Scale, than between the Stanford-Binet and WISC Verbal and Performance Scales. 3. There seems to be no support for the hypothesis that the difference between the Mean Stanford-Binet and the Mean WISC IQs at the Superior level will differ in direction according to the size of the Binet standard deviation at the age level in question. 4. The WISC appears to be an unsatisfactory test for measuring the markedly retarded children. Both in terms of construction, and interest value to subjects, the Stanford-Binet seems to be a better scale for the measurement of the lower levels of intelligence. 5. Keeping in mind the limited sample upon which this study was based, the two scales do not seem to be interchangeable. The practical import of this conclusion is that clinicians, social workers, psychiatrists, school teachers, and so on, should be fully aware that the child given both the tests may well yield widely different IQs on the respective tests. Suggestions for future research have been included. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this thesis was to determine the reliability and the validity of the Detroit Adjustment Inventory, "Telling What I Do” by Harry J. Baker, as a device for assisting teachers and social workers in their guidance programme. The inventory consists of 120 items divided into twenty four topics. For each of the one hundred items there are five choices of answers, for which numerical values from one to five are assigned. The pupil selects the response which most nearly describes his situation and draws a circle around the letter of that choice. The topics include Health, Sleeping-Eating, Self Care, Habits, Worries, Fears, Anger, Pity, Good Mixer, Inferior-Superior, Optimism-Pessimism, Will Power, Home Status, Home Atmosphere, Home Attitudes, Growing Up, Schools, Sportsmanship, Morals, Delinquency, Friends, Acting Your Part, Hobbies and Vocations. A Record Blank is supplied for determining the score from the inventory. The maximum score is 600. The Inventory was given to 111 boys and 91 girls in Grade XI at Kitsilano Junior-Senior High School, Vancouver, during November, 1946. Sixty-three of the boys were retested in early January, 1947. The ten boys who made the lowest scores in the November testing were given guidance during February and March and were given the Inventory again in April, 1947. As a basis for the thesis certain definitions of personality were discussed, and a brief history of personality testing was given. The conclusion was reached that the popular demand for some form of personality measurement has flooded the market with tests which have been insufficiently evaluated. The Teachers’ Handbook for the Inventory was critically analyzed. As a manual suitable for guidance and statistical Interpretation it was found wanting norms, validity, reliability, and intercorrelations between topics, were not given. The Handbook gives only a theoretical discussion of the inventory. The inventory is easily administered and scored. Some language and interpretation difficulties were reported by the students, but generally, they seemed to enjoy doing the inventory. Means and percentile norms were secured for each topic and for total scores. The mean score for boys was 456.85 and 454.51 for girls, on the November testing. The difference between the means is not significant at the 5% level. It was decided, however to treat the two sexes separately. On the January testing the mean score for the 63 boys was 458.41. The difference between the means of the first and second testings was not significant. The extent to which the topics were measuring separate features of personality was determined by computing intercorrelations between selected topics. The majority of the correlations were not significant at the 1% level. Test-retest reliability coefficients were determined for both topics and total scores. The reliability of the inventory based on total scores was found to be .74. For the topics, the reliability coefficient varied from .13 to .97. The relationships between test scores and teacher's judgments on four topics and total adjustment were determined by the null hypothesis, phi coefficients and Pearson's r. Few significant relationships were found. Item validity was determined by means of chi-square techniques. Fifty-two of the one hundred and twenty items were found to discriminate significantly between the 27 boys who made the highest scores and the 27 who made the lowest scores on the November testing. Interviews were held with the ten boys who made the lowest total scores on the November and January testings. In these interviews the remedial suggestions which Baker has prepared for each of his twenty-four topics were used. A personal validation of those topics on which the students had made- low scores was made. In the majority of cases low topic scores were validated by this interview. The ten boys were given the inventory again in early April and it was found six had scores above the 30th percentile which had been set as the lower limit for adjustment. The interviews with these ten boys were recorded. The Detroit Adjustment Inventory is not very satisfactory as a means of diagnosing and treating personality problems of high school students. It has some value as a basis for beginning a discussion on the general problems and difficulties of the student. The inventory has low internal and external validity. The reliability is sufficient for group guidance only. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

The use of standardized tests in the assessment of ethnic students who speak English as a second language has become an important issue in Canada due to the increasing number of immigrant students in the school system. The subjects of this study were a group of 34 Canadian born, bilingual Chinese third graders with at least three years of schooling in English. They were tested on two standardized tests and the results were compared with the standardization population. The study also investigated the correlations among these two measures and an informal teacher rating scale. The subjects were found to perform more than one standard deviation below the norm on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary test - Revised, which is a test of receptive language. Chinese speaking home environments and the culturally biased items in the test might have resulted in the significantly low score obtained by the subjects. On the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Fourth Edition, the subjects did not perform significantly different from the norm on the Test Composite, Verbal Reasoning, Abstract/Visual Reasoning, Short-Term Memory and seven subtests. They did score significantly higher than the norm on Pattern Analysis, Matrices, Number Series and Quantitative Reasoning and significantly lower on Copying and Memory for Sentences. When compared with a group of Asian subjects (ages 7-11) from the Stanford-Binet standardization sample, the subjects performed significantly higher on Quantitative Reasoning and lower on Short-term Memory. As consistent with the results of previous research, the subjects in the present study excelled in visual/perceptual and mathematical tests. It is possible that their (English Language) proficiency may have brought about significantly low score in Memory for Sentences. The four reasoning area scores on the Stanford-Binet were found to be significantly different from each other with the subjects' highest score in Quantitative Reasoning and the lowest in Short-Term Memory. Correlations among the three measures reached statistical significance ranging from the thirties to the sixties. Teacher rating correlated equally well with the standardized tests as there was no significant difference among the correlations. However, the correlations indicated that though these tests shared something in common, in practice, they cannot be used interchangeably. The study concluded that the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revised may not be an appropriate instrument for measuring the receptive language of Chinese students who have English as their second language. The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Fourth Edition could be considered a valid measure of the cognitive ability of this group of students. The positive and significant correlations among Teacher Rating and standardized tests indicate that teachers' perception of student ability parallels what formal testing reveals. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This research explores the effect of violations of the IRT local independence assumption. The assumption states that, conditional on ability, the responses of test takers to the items on a test are statistically independent. While this assumption is critical for the application of IRT to test data, it is such a strict requirement that it is unlikely to be met completely by any test. This research examines the extent to which the local independence assumption is violated in specific testing situations, and uses this information to determine the effect various levels of dependence have on IRT-based outcomes. Three tests, the LSAT, P-ACT+, and GMAT, were studied using the Q$\sb3$ statistic to evaluate the degree to which the local independence assumption is violated in practice. Each test examined violated the assumption to some degree. As expected, there was more dependence within test sections F than between test sections, and sections with item sets displayed more dependence than those without item sets. Within test sections, more dependence was displayed within item sets than between item sets. Based on these results, four dependence levels (zero, low, medium and high) were defined, and data were simulated to recover these dependencies. The simulated data were then compared to the true data to analyze the effect of these dependencies on calibration results and score distributions. The results indicated that high levels of dependency cause low scores to be underestimated and high scores to be overestimated. The expected effects of this result were observed for the item parameters, ability parameters and item and test characteristic curves. In terms of the score distribution, a normally distributed population of scores is spread out at the tails and flattened in the center as a result of a greater number of low and high scores. For the most part, the effects observed were not problematic for low to medium levels of dependence. These results have implications for many IRT applications, such as test assembly, equating, differential item functioning, and computer adaptive testing.