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Psychological evaluation is defined as a way of testing people about their behavior, personality, and capabilities to draw conclusions using combinations of techniques.〔Framingham, J. (2011). What is Psychological Assessment?. Psych Central. Retrieved on November 11, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-psychological-assessment/0005890〕 Over the years, it has developed from unethical methods of locking people up for tests to the many different strategies seen today. We currently see evaluation being used in several different settings for multiple purposes, such as education or legal situations. The purpose behind many modern psychological evaluations is to try to pinpoint what is happening in someone's psychological life that may be inhibiting their ability to behave or feel in more appropriate or constructive ways. It is the mental equivalent of physical examination. It is important to use psychological evaluation properly otherwise violations of the professional ethical code can occur, resulting in harm to the client and invalid assessment results. There is also a risk of evaluation based upon unscientific principles, as found in pop psychology, or ''pseudopsychology''. ==History== ''Psychological evaluation'' has been around for roughly 200 years. It started in China, and many psychologists throughout Europe worked to develop methods of testing into the 1900s. The first tests focused on aptitude. Eventually scientists tried to gauge mental processes in patients with brain damage, then children with special needs. Psychological evaluation has its roots in China in the 1800s. This primitive form of testing was used to determine people’s eligibility to hold public office. Those who wanted a position were locked in a room and wrote essays and poems for long periods of time. Those who passed moved onto the next round. This continued until 1-3 people were considered eligible to hold office. Early written exams also included material about civil law, military affairs, agriculture, revenue, and geography.〔Gregory, R. J. (2010). Psychological testing: history, principles, and applications. (7th ed., pp. 1-29 inclusive). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.〕 These methods were not popular amongst citizens and were therefore abolished in 1906. Also in the 1800s, Hubert von Grashey developed a battery to determine the abilities of brain-damaged patients. This test was also not favorable, as it took over 100 hours to administer. However, this influenced Wilhelm Wundt, who had the first psychological laboratory in Germany. His tests were shorter, but used similar techniques. Wundt also measured mental processes and acknowledged the fact that there are individual differences between people. Frances Galton established the first tests in London for measuring IQ. He tested thousands of people, examining their physical characteristics as a basis for his results and many of the records remain today.〔 James Cattell studied with him, and eventually worked on his own with brass instruments for evaluation. His studies led to his paper “Mental Tests and Measurements,” one of the most famous writings on psychological evaluation. He also coined the term “''mental test''” in this paper. As the 1900s began, Alfred Binet was also studying evaluation. However, he was more interested in distinguishing children with special needs from their peers after he could not prove in his other research that magnets could cure hysteria. He did his research in France, with the help of Theodore Simon. They created a list of questions that were used to determine if children would receive regular instruction, or would participate in special education programs. Their battery was continually revised and developed, until 1911 when the ''Binet-Simon questionnaire'' was finalized for different age levels. After Binet's death, intelligence testing was further studied by Charles Spearman. He theorized that intelligence was made up of several different subcategories, which were all interrelated. He combined all the factors together to form a general intelligence, which he abbreviated as "g".〔Fancher, R., & Rutherford, A. (2012). Pioneers of psychology. (4th ed., pp. 563-601 inclusive). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.〕 This led to William Stern's idea of an intelligence quotient. He believed that children of different ages should be compared to their peers to determine their mental age in relation to their chronological age. Lewis Terman combined the Binet-Simon questionnaire with the intelligence quotient and the result was the standard test we use today, with an average score of 100.〔 The large influx of non-English speaking immigrants into the US brought about a change in psychological testing that relied heavily on verbal skills for subjects that were not literate in English, or had speech/hearing difficulties. In 1913, R.H. Sylvester standardized the first non-verbal psychological test. In this particular test, participants fit different shaped blocks into their respective slots on a Seguin form board.〔 From this test, Knox developed a series of non-verbal psychological tests that he used while working at the Ellis Island immigrant station in 1914. In his tests, were a simple wooden puzzle as well as digit-symbol substitution test where each participant saw digits paired up with a particular symbol, they were then shown the digits and had to write in the symbol that was associated with it.〔 When the United States moved into WWI, Robert M. Yerkes convinced the government that they should be testing all of the recruits they were receiving into the Army. The results of the tests could be used to make sure that the “''mentally incompetent''” and “''mentally exceptional''” were assigned to appropriate jobs. Yerkes and his colleagues developed the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests to use on all new recruits.〔 These tests set a precedent for the development of psychological testing for the next several decades. After seeing the success of the Army standardized tests, college administration quickly picked up on the idea of group testing to decide entrance into their institutions. The College Entrance Examination Board was created to test applicants to colleges across the nation. In 1925, they developed tests that were no longer essay tests that were very open to interpretation, but now were objective tests that were also the first to be scored by machine. These early tests evolved into modern day College Board tests, like the ''Scholastic Assessment Test'', ''Graduate Record Examination'', and the ''Law School Admissions Test''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「psychological evaluation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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