DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF PSYCHOLOGY POSTGRADUATE ADMISSION TEST: AN INITIAL STAGE

Abstract

Admission tests (also known as selection tests) are widely used across different disciplines in tertiary education. Specifically, in the Psychology discipline, some institutions required applicants to provide proof of completing and passing a standardised test such as the Graduate Record Examination (Psychology subject). This paper is a part of the first author’s doctoral thesis, with an aim to deliberate the initial stage of the development and validation of Psychology Postgraduate Admission Test. This initial stage included three parts: (1) identification of issues and problems, (2) review of the literature, and (3) future direction of test development and validation. The first part of this paper suggests that although the standardised tests are globally accepted, yet, there are certain issues and problems such as the nature of the aptitude-based test and there is not much attention given to assessing the non-cognitive constructs for the selection criteria. The second part of this paper comprehensively reviews and inspects available literature on selection criteria for postgraduates, particularly in psychology programmes. The review highlights that both components; cognitive (i.e., CGPA) and non-cognitive (i.e., Personality, Motivation, Attitudes, etc) are vital in selecting the best-fit candidates. The third part of this paper discusses the future direction of test development and validation, whereby, a psychometric-based study will be conducted, consisting five stages of test development stages (Test conceptualization, test construction, test try-out, item analysis, and test revision). The outcome of this paper prepares the warrant for developing and validating a measure that combines the cognitive and non-cognitive constructs before an acceptably valid and reliable measure could be used in psychology postgraduate selection.

Keywords: Psychology Postgraduate Admission, Test development, Test validation.