19.1 – Identify Assessment and Evaluation Methods

Purpose & Context

Career Development Professionals (CDPs) assess clients to inform interventions. CDPs identify assessment and evaluation methods based on understanding of career development theory, client characteristics, the context and purpose of the assessment or evaluation, and the anticipated use of the results.CDPs must understand professional educational and psychological testing standards to ensure they will offer only assessment and evaluation services for which they are qualified. Many assessments require specialized training, education, or experience to administer and interpret correctly.Use of any assessment and evaluation that is not relevant to the context, purpose and anticipated use of the test results may invalidate the test’s interpretation. CDPs must use recognized psychometric instruments that are without risk of harm to the test taker.

Effective Performance

Competent career development professionals must be able to:

P1. Select assessment and evaluation assessment tools:
- Verify intended use of test results, e.g. career counseling, education
- Identify test and appropriate norms to be used, considering:
- Construct the test is measuring
- Test purpose, context, and underlying theory
- Characteristics of the norm group
- Psychometric characteristics, e.g. validity, reliability, fairness
- Administrative procedures, e.g. accommodations for people with disabilities, test administrator requirements,
  language, administration time
- Client characteristics, e.g. psychological, physical, cognitive, affective or behavioural conditions
- Accommodations available, e.g. modifications that are possible to test people with disabilities, modifications
  required to ensure language requirements are met
- Evaluate practicality of test, e.g. time required, costs, ease of administration procedures, test user
  qualifications
- Recognize importance of fairness in testing, e.g. unbiased, quality of language, cultural sensitivity
- Choose language version matched to level of proficiency of test taker
P2. Evaluate own qualifications to determine if qualified to administer and interpret results:
- Contract administration and interpretation to qualified persons, where necessary
P3. Identify accommodations required, for example:
- Person with disability:
  - Ask client to obtain physician-signed description of condition
  - Seek expert advice on potential effects of disabilities on test performance
  - Seek expert advice on use of alternative assessment procedures
- Language requirements:
  - Ask client to specify language requirements

Knowledge & Understanding

Competent career development professionals must know and understand:

K1. Testing practice in the context area, e.g. assessment and evaluation measures appropriate for vocational and career
planning purposes
K2. Testing principles and ethical use of tests, such as:
- Test construction, administration, scoring and interpretation
- Psychometrics and measurement, e.g. classical test theory
- Descriptive statistics, e.g. frequency distributions, statistics characterizing normal curve, measures of
  central tendency, measures of variation, indices of relationship
- Scales, scores, and transformations, e.g. types of scales, types of scores, scale score equating, cut scores
- Reliability and measurement error
- Validity and meaning of test scores
- Fairness
K3. Advantages and disadvantages of different types of assessment instruments, such as:
- Mental and physical ability tests
- Achievement tests, e.g. knowledge, work sample or performance test
- Interest measures, e.g. career related interests
- Work and personal values measures
- Personality inventories, e.g. vocational-oriented or clinical
- Assessment centres
- Interviews
- Comprehensive career planning measures

Contextual Variables

Competent career development professionals must be able to perform this competency in the following range of contexts:

Assessment strategies will be identified based on client’s needs.

Glossary & Key References

Terms

Industry-specific terms contained in the standard defined here, where applicable.

Validity: degree to which a measurement tool measures what it claims to measure.
Reliability: consistency of a measure to produce similar results under similar conditions.
Fairness: assessment should be appropriate for all qualified subjects independent of race,
religion, gender or age.
Norm group: sample of the relevant population on whom the test scoring procedures and
interpretations are based.
Test User Qualifications: qualification levels required of test user specified by test publisher:
- A: No special requirements
- B: Bachelor’s degree or master’s degree in a related field and specialized training in psychometric assessment
- C: Doctorate degree in psychology, education, or closely related field with high level of experience in test
  interpretation

Information Sources and Resources for Consideration

Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), 2014.

Test in Print IX. Buros Centre for Testing. Nancy Anderson, Jennifer E. Schuleter, Janet F. Carlson, and Kurt F. Geisinger, 2016.

Association for Assessment in Counseling and Education (AACE), a division of the American Counselling Association (ACA) http://aac.nacat.edu/resources.html

Context Rating Scales

Criticality

Q: What is the consequence of a professional being unable to perform this skill according to the standard?

Moderate risk: CRITICAL

Frequency

Q: How frequent and under what conditions is this skill performed?

Routinely, regular course of procedure

Level of Difficulty

Q: Under routine circumstances, how would you rate the level of difficulty in performing this skill?

Moderate difficulty or complexity

Time Required to Gain Proficiency

Q: What is the average length of time or number of repeated events that are minimally necessary for an individual to become proficient in performing the skill to the standard?

A career development professional requires a minimum experience of identifying the assessment and evaluation strategies of at least 40 different clients with varying assessment needs.

Autonomy

Practitioners typically perform this competency without supervision, and alone.

Automation

It is unlikely that this competency will automate.

Requisite Work Aids, Tools, Equipment or Materials

None