The Ontology of Psychology Department of Psychology
Faculty of Arts
http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/
Tuesday/Thursday 11-12:20 Room: BSP 226 Lab: Monday 1:15-3:50 Room: BSP 226
[Note that we will start all labs 15 minutes later than BearTracks says we do, for pragmatic reasons having to do with departmental office hours.]
Course Website: https://eclass.srv.ualberta.ca Instructor: Chris Westbury [email protected]
Office: BSP-577 Phone: 492-5275
Office Hours: My office hours are 12:15 – 1:15 pm Monday/Friday or by appointment. The best way to set up an appointment (or to ask me a short, simple question) is by e-mail. Please include the term ‘PSYCO431’ in your subject heading (along with any other words you like); this makes it less likely that I will bury your e-mail by accident. If your question or comment might be of general interest, I encourage you to post it on the 431 discussion board (at the top of the eClass website), so I can answer it for everyone in the class. At my discretion, I may answer e-mailed questions in that forum so that everyone can benefit from the answer; if I do, the question will be anonymous.
Teaching Assistant: Parastoo Harati [email protected] Office: BSP-117
Office Hours: TBA
Course Prerequisites: STAT 141 or 151 and PSYCO 333 or 335.
Course-based Ethics Approval in place regarding all research projects that involve human testing, questionnaires, etc?
Yes No, not needed. No such projects approved.
Community Service Learning component Required Optional N/A
Past or Representative Evaluative Course Material Available Exam registry – Students’ Union
http://www.su.ualberta.ca/services/infolink/exam/
See explanations below Document distributed in class
Other (please specify) NA
Additional mandatory Instructional fees (approved by Board of Governors)
Yes No
Required Texts: The only required readings will be linked from the eClass website. The readings do not cover everything covered in class, and vice versa. You are advised to get class notes from another student if you miss a class.
Please note that you will only be tested on conceptual material that is directly relevant to psychometrics, as presented in the lectures. Some of the readings have been selected to contain other information that puts these concepts into context. You are not responsible for any of this contextual material.
Thomas Hogan's Psychological Testing: A Practical Introduction may help clarify some ideas. It is not required. It may be available at the bookstore. Kaplan & Saccuzzo's Psychological Testing may also be available in the bookstore; it is also a very fine (but unnecessary) textbook.
The university libraries contain many textbooks on psychometrics. Much of the technical material in this course is mathematical and therefore eternally true. Since eternal truth does not go out of date, almost any psychometrics textbook written since about 1955 may be helpful.
The WWW contains a wealth of information relevant to this course. I will link to some of that material on the class website.
I post all overheads used in class in PowerPoint format. I will post the final lecture notes by 5 pm the day before the class in which they are used.
Course Objectives: The main objectives of this course are:
i.) To introduce you to the theory and practice of the measurement of psychological processes and states
ii.) To give you some practical experience in administering, scoring, and understanding the structure of some common psychological assessment tools. Note that this experience will not qualify you to administer the tests in any professional capacity.
Full Disclosure Clause: Students have sometimes been surprised and/or dismayed to discover that the material presented in this class involves mathematics: quite a bit of probability theory (psychometricians love probability theory!), some statistics, and a little bit of algebra. Gaining an understanding of this formal material is vital to the course.
Questions on exams will probe your understanding, rather than only your memorization, of this material. You cannot succeed in this course by memorization alone. All formulas will be given to you on the exam, but they may be tested in such a way that their blind application without understanding will lead you astray.
It is highly recommended that you work through some of the provided example problems, especially in probability, and that you devote study time to trying to understand, rather than memorize, the concepts from this class.
I have also had complaints that the class also includes a little bit of philosophy. There is no way around this. Some of the concepts we need to understand to master psychometrics really are abstract, and require you think about them to understand them. Psychometrics may, indeed, be aptly characterized as the mathematics of philosophical psychology, since it defines quantitative methods for asking and answering questions about the existence and nature (the ontology) of abstract psychological entities. So, yeah, we’ll be doing math and we’ll be philosophizing about what that math means. It’ll be fun. For me, anyway.
Labs: This course includes a lab component. We do not have labs every week during term: they start late and end early (see the class schedule on BearTracks). During the labs you will have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with some of the tests discussed in class. Little or no attention is paid to teaching you how to administer the tests, which is something this class cannot and does not attempt to qualify you to do. The focus is on learning how to extract psychometric
information from the testing materials, and use it to assess questions about the psychometric properties of the test. Exam questions may be drawn from material presented in labs.
Assignments and Grade break-down:
i.) Construction of your own test: 32%
Item set: 7% [Due Monday March 2 by 11:59 PM]
Hand in a spell-checked, well-presented set of questions you intend to use in your psychological instrument (see below). Everyone in your group will receive the same mark for these questions, and you only need to hand in one set per group.
Paper: 25% [Due Tuesday April 7 by 11:59 PM]
You are required to create a test of a psychological construct from a list that will be presented in class in the first two weeks, and collect and analyze data on that test questions. You must at a minimum:
a.) discuss its validity and reliability;
b.) conduct and report an item analysis;
c.) discuss a factor analysis of your data
d.) discuss the cut-off points and range of application of your test.
Further analyses are encouraged. Your mark will be based mainly on your report of the formal characteristics of your test. Originality, ingenuity in design, and care in written presentation will also be taken into consideration.
The success or failure of your test is mainly irrelevant to this assignment. You will only be marked on the evidence of rigor and care taken in design, analysis, and textual presentation. A paper describing a test that turns out to be utterly useless for the purposes for which it was intended may receive the highest mark, as long as no obviously careless errors were made in its design or analysis, and as long as its uselessness is demonstrated with sufficient rigor. In this assignment (as in all good science) rigorous evidence of failure counts as success.
In order to encourage the development of tests of the highest possible caliber, you may work in groups of up to four people in designing, testing, and analyzing your test. I recommend that you work with at least one other person because it may be difficult for one person to collect sufficient data for the assignment. Each group member must write his/her paper independently.
Although clearly papers from one group are expected to be similar in their content, everyone in the group will be penalized with a low mark if the papers are simply plagiarized from each other.
You can do everything else as a group, but do not write your papers together.
The final paper should be a word-processed, spell-checked essay, with full APA citation of all sources, if any. A length of 8-10 pages might be sufficient for you to attain a high mark.
There is no upper page limit if you have something to say, but a rambling long paper will receive a lower mark than a tightly-argued short paper. The best papers I have seen in this class have ranged between 15 and 25 pages. The papers will be marked on organization and structure as well as content.
20% of your mark will be based on peer-evaluations. Each member of the group may submit with their paper a mark for the group members (including themselves), reflecting the perceived value of their contribution to the project. The average contribution mark given to each member of the group will be pro-rated against his or her received mark. For example, consider a person that gets a grade of 75%. If that person is judged by his/her peers to get a grade of just 50%
for his/her contribution to the group's work, then that person's final mark on the presentation will be: (0.75 x 80) + (0.75 x (0.5 x 20)) = 67.5%. Another member of the same group who is judged by his peers to have done work worth 90% would get a grade of (0.75 x 80) + (0.75 x (0.9 x 20))
= 73.5%. If no mark is given, the default is 100%. This presumed and desired default case is appropriate if everyone is perfectly happy with the work done by the other group members. If everyone gets the default peer-evaluation grade of 100%, the formula works out so that everyone will receive the grade given on the paper. The point of this complication is to allow students to penalize group members who do not pull their weight. The peer marks will be anonymous to your own group members.
ii.) Oral presentation of your test: 8% [April 6 and 7]
You will be required to present to the class a short (5 to 10 minute) presentation discussing the formal properties of your own test (as above). Minimally, you should cover the same aspects of the test as above: validity, reliability, and cut-off points. You should explain how the test was constructed and validated. Talk about factors if there are any.
There will be one presentation per group (see above). Everyone in the group will receive the same mark for the presentation. It is not necessary that everyone present: a group may feel free to elect one or more members to do the actual presentation.
What you are expected to produce: An interesting, creative, and informative presentation lasting between 5 and 10 minutes. PowerPoint projection will be available and it (or some equivalent) is encouraged. Your presentation should be of the same quality you would present to an unknown audience composed of psychologically aware people, for example at an academic conference.
Questions, discussion, and criticism of presentation content from the rest of the class is encouraged.
Your group should also hand in to me a two-sheet summary for your test, before you present. (It can be given in on the day of the presentation.) One page should include a
bibliography. The other should include very brief point-form outline of the most important psychometric properties of the test you will present. It is up to you to decide what properties I am looking for: this is part of the assignment.
iii.) Mid-term exam: 25% [Tuesday February 11]
This exam will cover all the material in the first section of the course, relating to the conceptual background, history, and theory of psychometrics. The format of the test will be multiple choice and short answer. You can bring one 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper (a 'cheatsheet') to the midterm. It
can contain whatever you want, on both sides, printed or written as small as you like, with as many colors as you like. You can also bring a non-Internet-connected calculator.
iv.) Final exam: 35% [During final exam period, TBA.]
This exam will cover the entire class. Although the focus will be on the material not covered in the midterm, you should expect questions that require you to understand psychometric theory. The format of the test will be multiple choice, short answer, and short essay. You can bring one 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper (a 'cheatsheet') to the midterm. It can contain whatever you want, on both sides, printed or written as small as you like, with as many colors as you like. You can also bring a non-Internet-connected calculator.
Grades: The final grade will be determined as a function of the total marks on all assignments.
The following is the table used for the conversion of percentage grades to the equivalent grade on the letter grade system, although it may be over-ridden in the event of massive departure from the normally expected grade distribution.
Grade Descriptor Letter Grade
Point
Expected
%
90-100% Excellent A+ 4.0 8%
85-89% [Mighty fine] A 4.0 12%
80-84% [Fine] A- 3.7 17%
77-79% Good B+ 3.3 16%
74-76% [Pretty good] B 3.0 16%
70-73% [OK] B- 2.7 12%
67-69% Satisfactory C+ 2.3 7%
64-66% [So-so] C 2.0 5%
60-63% [Not so great] C- 1.7 3%
56-59% Poor D+ 1.3 3%
50-55% Minimal Pass D 1.0 2%
< 50% Fail F 0.0 1%
The letter grades change about every four to five percentage points. With random distribution across each range, this means that between 20% and 25% of students in any class will end up with a final grade that is less than 1% from the next letter grade. Note that there is absolutely no way to arbitrarily raise these (or any other) selected final grades after they have been
computed. I am sure you can appreciate that doing so would open up many ethical and pragmatic problems. Moreover, after you have taken this class you will also understand that your final grade (like every grade you will earn in university) is an estimate, not a fact: it is just as probably that your final grade is ‘too high’ as it is that it is ‘too low’. It makes exactly as much sense to lower your grade as to raise it. If you are on the edge of the next letter grade level, I will therefore be happy to lower your mark by a few points to make you more comfortable with the letter grade you actually attained. Just ask.
Late papers: Late papers will be penalized according to the amount of inconvenience their delay causes for the grader, in the following manner. There will be no late penalty for a late paper so
long as the grader has not yet finished marking the assignments already in hand. As soon as the last assignment 'in hand' is marked, late assignments will be marked down by 10% (exactly, not proportionally to the grade given) for every 24 hour period (or part thereof, including weekends and holidays) in which the assignment is not in the hands of the grader. For example, a late assignment that would have been worth 75% on time will be worth 75% - 10% = 65% if it is one day late. This penalty will not apply if a valid excuse with documentation is provided. Note that this penalty system is extremely liberal if you are just a little late, but it is punishing once it kicks in, so it is not a good idea to be very late with your final assignment.
This late policy is only in effect until the final grades have been posted. Papers handed in after the final course grades have been posted on either eClass or BearTracks will receive a grade of zero.
Missed exams: If you present a valid excuse for missing an exam, you will either be required to make it up by writing at another time, or the weight of that exam will be added to your final examination in accordance with the University Calendar (23.5.1). Which option will apply to your case is entirely at the instructor's discretion. Without a valid excuse, failure to write or turn in an exam will result in an exam grade of zero. Valid excuses for missing an exam are specified by university regulations; there is no leeway for instructor discretion. Acceptable excuses include illness, birth, marriage, and death. These conditions generally apply to you or to members of your immediate family on the date of the exam. However, please note that in the event of your own death it will not be possible to schedule a supplementary exam for you.
Other information
Required Notes: Policy about course outlines can be found in Section 23.4(2) of the University Calendar.
Academic Integrity
“The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards regarding academic honesty and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are particularly urged to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Student Behaviour (online at
http://www.governance.ualberta.ca/en/CodesofConductandResidenceCommunityStandards/Code ofStudentBehaviour.aspx ) and avoid any behaviour that could potentially result in suspicions of cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentation of facts and/or participation in an offence. Academic dishonesty is a serious offence and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.”
Learning and working environment
The Faculty of Arts is committed to ensuring that all students, faculty and staff are able to work and study in an environment that is safe and free from discrimination and harassment. It does not tolerate behaviour that undermines that environment. The department urges anyone who feels that this policy is being violated to:
• Discuss the matter with the person whose behaviour is causing concern; or
• If that discussion is unsatisfactory, or there is concern that direct discussion is inappropriate or threatening, discuss it with the Chair of the Department.
For additional advice or assistance regarding this policy you may contact the Student Ombuds Office: (http://www.ombudservice.ualberta.ca/ ). Information about the University of Alberta Discrimination and Harassment Policy and Procedures is described in UAPPOL at
https://policiesonline.ualberta.ca/PoliciesProcedures/Pages/DispPol.aspx?PID=110 .
Academic Honesty:
All students should consult the information provided by the Office of Judicial Affairs regarding avoiding cheating and plagiarism in particular and academic dishonesty in general. If in doubt about what is permitted in this class, ask the instructor.
An instructor or coordinator who is convinced that a student has handed in work that he or she could not possibly reproduce without outside assistance is obliged, out of consideration of fairness to other students, to report the case to the Associate Dean of the Faculty.
Recording of Lectures:
Audio or video recording of lectures is allowed in PSYCO431. Recorded material is to be used solely for personal study, and is not to be used or distributed for any other purpose without prior written consent from the instructor.
Student Accessibility Services:
If you have special needs that could affect your performance in this class, please let me know during the first week of the term so that appropriate arrangements can be made. If you are not already registered with Specialized Support & Disability Services, contact their office early in the semester (2-800 SUB; Email [email protected]; Email; phone 780-492-3381;
www.ssds.ualberta.ca).
Missed Assignments and Term Exams:
Regular attendance is essential for optimal performance in any course. In cases of potentially excusable absences due to illness or domestic affliction, notify your instructor by e-mail within 2 days. Regarding absences that may be excusable and procedures for addressing course
components missed as a result. Be aware that unexcused absences may result in partial or total loss of the grade for the “attendance and participation” component(s) of a course, as well as for any assignments that are not handed in or completed as a result.
For an excused absence where the cause is religious belief, a student must contact the instructor(s) within two weeks of the start of class to request accommodation for the term (including the final exam, where relevant). Instructors may request adequate documentation to substantiate the student request.
A student who cannot write a term examination or complete a term assignment due to incapacitating illness, severe domestic affliction or other compelling reasons can apply for a deferred exam. In all cases, instructors may request adequate documentation to substantiate the reason for the absence at their discretion.
If you present a valid excuse for missing an exam, you will either be required to make it up by
writing at another time, or the weight of that exam will be added to your final examination in accordance with the University Calendar (23.5.1). Which option will apply to your case is entirely at the instructor's discretion. Without a valid excuse, failure to write or turn in an exam will result in an exam grade of zero. Valid excuses for missing an exam are specified by
university regulations; there is no leeway for instructor discretion. Acceptable excuses include illness, birth, marriage, and death. These conditions generally apply to you or to members of your immediate family on the date of the exam. However, please note that in the event of your own death it will not be possible to schedule a supplementary exam for you.
Deferral of term work is a privilege and not a right; there is no guarantee that a deferral will be granted. Misrepresentation of Facts to gain a deferral is a serious breach of the Code of Student Behaviour.
Deferred Final Examination:
For those with an acceptable excuse for missing the exam, the deferred final will take place at 1 PM on the first Monday after the final exam, in accordance with the University Calendar (23.5.6).
Students have access to their final exam schedule through Bear Tracks and on the Registrar’s website will in advance. Multiple exams and closely scheduled final exams is not a valid excuse for a deferral of one or more final exams.
A student who cannot write the final examination due to incapacitating illness, severe domestic affliction or other compelling reasons can apply for a deferred final examination. Students who failed at the start of term to request exam accommodations for religious beliefs are expected to follow the normal deferred final examination process. Such an application must be made to the student’s Faculty office within two working days of the missed examination and must be supported by a Statutory Declaration or other appropriate documentation (Calendar
§23.5.6). Deferred examinations are a privilege and not a right; there is no guarantee that a deferred examination will be granted. Misrepresentation of Facts to gain a deferred examination is a serious breach of the Code of Student Behaviour.
Student Success Centre: Students who require additional help in developing strategies for better time management, study skills or examination skills should contact the Student Success Centre (2-300 Students’ Union Building).
COPYRIGHT: Dr. Chris Westbury, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Alberta (2019/2020)