Predicting performance in a psychological statistics course

In statistics courses for psychology students, only age and algebra skills predicted course performance of 71 students.     

Predicting career performance of physicians using the biographical inventory approach

Two critical problems face professional and technical schools and their admissions committees: (1) the criterion problem of defining what constitutes a “good” career practitioner, and (2) the predictor problem of assessing in advance which applicants to the various schools are most likely to become these “good” career practitioners (and not just good students). The present project, working with a 333 physician sample, was designed to establish such criteria and predictors in the field of medicine. Seven important composite and summary criteria were established and five of them were successfully predicted with cross-validities at levels beyond .40 and ranging as high as .56 by a 351-item biographical inventory. A triplecross validation item-analysis design was used.     

Developing a biodata measure and situational judgment inventory as predictors of college student performance

This article describes the development and validation of a biographical data (biodata) measure and situational judgment inventory (SJI) as useful predictors of broadly defined college student performance outcomes. These measures provided incremental validity when considered in combination with standardized college-entrance tests (i.e., SAT/ACT) and a measure of Big Five personality constructs. Racial subgroup mean differences were much smaller on the biodata and SJI measures than on the standardized tests and college grade point average. Female students tended to outperform male students on most predictors and outcomes with the exception of the SAT/ACT. The biodata and SJI measures show promise for student development contexts and for selecting students on a wide range of outcomes with reduced adverse impact.     

Predicting transfer from training performance.

The research in this paper was designed to examine the extent to which improvement on a training task can be used to predict performance on a transfer task. This aim involved evaluating the proposition that when old skills are executed in the context of new tasks, they continue to improve as if stimulus conditions have not changed. That is, power functions that describe improvement on old skills during their initial acquisition should predict further improvement on these skills during their execution in new tasks. Three experiments were performed to achieve the aim of testing this proposition. Experiment 1 revealed that old skills were executed slower in the context of a new task than was predicted on the basis of training performance. Hence improvement in the old skills appeared to be disrupted by performance of the new task. Experiment 2 was designed to examine whether this disruption was due to an increase in complexity in the task from training to transfer, or simply due to any change in task. The results suggested that any change may cause some disruption, but this disruption was greatest with an increase in task complexity. Experiment 3 was designed to examine two variables that may affect the magnitude of this effect: the relative change in task complexity from training to transfer, and the amount of practice on a task prior to a change in task. The results indicated that only the former variable had any effect. In all three experiments no effects on performance accuracy were noted, and response times in the transfer tasks eventually returned to levels predicted by training learning functions. These results were interpreted as indicating that old skills do continue to improve in new tasks as if conditions are not altered, but that disruptions caused by transfer are related to performance overheads associated with reconceptualising the task.     

Mexican- and Anglo-American differences on the psychological screening inventory

This study investigated differences between Mexican- and Anglo-American college students on the Psychological Screening Inventory (PSI; Lanyon, 1970, 1973)-a brief personality instrument designed to detect persons who might benefit from more extensive evaluations in mental health settings. Further, this study controlled for the Mexican Americans' acculturation level, age, and socioeconomic status (SES), as these variables have routinely been shown to covary with other psychosocial variables. From data on 107 Mexican-American and 105 Anglo-American college students, we found that Mexican-American subjects had higher PSI scores on the Alienation and Defensiveness subscales and lower scores on the Social Nonconformity and Expression subscales than did Anglo-American subjects. With acculturation covaried, however, these differences were no longer statistically significant. With age and SES covaried, the two ethnic groups differed on Alienation, Expression, and Defensiveness, suggesting that Mexican Americans' performance on the PSI varies as a function of acculturation, age, and SES. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Predicting preferences for dating partners from past experiences of psychological abuse: identifying the psychological ingredients of situations

Are women who have been the victim of psychological abuse in the past more likely to prefer an abusive dating partner in the future? Are men who have been the perpetrator of abuse more likely to prefer a dating partner with high attachment anxiety, a characteristic associated with victims of abuse? The present research used a highly repeated, within-subject, multilevel approach to identify the characteristics of potential dating partners that constitute salient psychological ingredients of situations influencing partner preference. Study 1 found that college-age women who reported more instances of receiving psychological abuse, compared to women who did not, showed a stronger preference for male dating partners who possessed characteristics associated with an abusive personality (e.g., possessiveness). Study 2 found that college-age men who reported more instances of inflicting psychological abuse, compared to men who did not, showed a stronger preference for female dating partners characterized by high attachment anxiety.     

Construct validity of the misrepresentation scales of the psychological screening inventory

This study provides construct validity evidence and reliabilities (consistency and stability) for 5 misrepresentation (response distortion) scales of the Psychological Screening Inventory (PSI; Lanyon, 1970, 1973, 1978) in assessing 3 constructs: exaggeration of psychopathology, exaggeration of personal virtue, and exaggeration of health problems. Using data from forensic cases, the existence and independence of these 3 constructs were confirmed in data from the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Paulhus, 1986, 1991). The PSI scales were then shown to load highly on these constructs. The PSI scales also showed the expected patterns when their mean scores were examined for 15 sets of responses from participant groups with varied motivations to misrepresent. We present receiver operating characteristic data to show the success of the scales in distinguishing between simulators and appropriate comparison groups. Using the same data, we also present classification accuracy in terms of positive predictive power and negative predictive power based on a sensitivity level of 90% and misrepresentation base rates of .20 and .10.     

Predicting the outcome of behaviour therapy by psychological tests

A battery of psychological tests was devised, and used in an attempt to predict the outcome of behaviour therapy. Nineteen patients who requested treatment for transvestism were tested, and thirteen of these subsequently presented for treatment. The patients were grouped into those who failed to attend for treatment, those who were treated and apparently ‘cured’, and those who relapsed after the completion of treatment. Comparison of the test results in these groups showed that statistically acceptable differentiation could be obtained from the results of the Neuroticism scale of the MPI, the results of verbal conditioning, and the scores on the Slater Masculinity-Femininity Interest scale. It is argued that these results imply that the symptomatology of the recovered group compared with that of the other groups, was less complex and extensive. Some of the theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Predicting school performance of preschool children from parent reports

Parents of 391 preschool children ages 49 to 64 months completed a brief developmental inventory as part of a preschool screening program operated by an urban school district. The 28-item developmental inventory assessed adaptive behavior and language development. In addition, preschool children were administered the Minneapolis Preschool Screening Instrument. Teacher ratings of kindergarten performance the following year provided criterion data to validate the screening measures. Correlations with the overall teacher rating [the mean of nine ratings] were .40 for the adaptive behavior scale and .57 for the language scale. Validity figures for the developmental inventory were significantly higher for low SES than for high SES children, for older children [57 to 64 months] than for younger children [49 to 56 months], and for firstborn children than for younger siblings. No effects were found by sex. While a positive relationship between parent reports of developmental functioning and early school performance was clearly established, validity levels did not justify use of parent information as a sole source of preschool screening information.This research was supported in part by a grant from the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped.     

Predicting true patterns of cognitive performance from noisy data

Starting from the premise that the purpose of cognitive modeling is to gain information about the cognitive processes of individuals, we develop a general theoretical framework for assessment of models on the basis of tests of the models’ ability to yield information about the true performance patterns of individual subjects and the processes underlying them. To address the central problem that observed performance is a composite of true performance and error, we present formal derivations concerning inference from noisy data to true performance. Analyses of model fits to simulated data illustrate the usefulness of our approach for coping with difficult issues of model identifiability and testability.     

Comprehensive psychological services at the secondary level utilizing student paraprofessionals

This article notes references in school psychology literature which focus on dissatisfaction with role, claiming that the field has remained reactive and narrow in scope in spite of major statements calling for more expansive roles during the past several decades. A broad, comprehensive paraprofessional training/supervisory model utilizing secondary level students is described; the model incorporates twelve paraprofessional involvement areas as part of a total high school psychological services delivery system. It is noted that individual client data and program evaluation have portrayed student improvement rates ranging from 50% to 90%, increased consumer satisfaction with psychological services, and increased visibility and knowledge of the psychologist's role among total school population. Suggestions for further research and evaluation are discussed.     

Predicting athletic performance from cardiovascular indexes of challenge and threat

This study examined the relationship between pre-performance motivational states (challenge vs. threat) and subsequent performance in athletic competition. Prior to the season, college baseball and softball players imagined and gave a speech about a specific baseball/softball playing situation while cardiovascular indexes of challenge and threat were recorded. These physiological challenge/threat indexes significantly predicted athletic performance during the subsequent season, such that players who experienced challenge in the laboratory performed better relative to those who experienced threat. The implications for personnel selection and the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat are discussed.     

Eyewitness performance in different psychological types

A study of 112 subjects examined the performance on a complex memory task by various Jungian psychological types. Although differences did not emerge in terms of overall accuracy, they did emerge in terms of susceptibility to postevent information. Introverts and intuitives, alone and in combination, were found to be more prone to accept both misleading and consistent postevent information, rendering them more likely to be inaccurate in the first case and more likely to be accurate in the second case. A variety of explanations are considered.     

Predicting sex offender institutional adjustment and treatment compliance using the personality assessment inventory

This study examined the utility of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) to identify prison inmates in a mandatory sex offender treatment program prone to engage in institutional misconduct. Archival PAI and institutional disciplinary data were coded for 137 inmates in treatment for an average of 1.59 years. The Antisocial Features scale predicted various forms of general and major infractions (e.g., verbal aggression), with no other scales providing any incremental validity beyond this measure. The Treatment Rejection scale was uniquely but modestly correlated (r=.14) with treatment noncompliance, even though such infractions were rare in this sample.