Examination Paper Essay Example for Free

Examination Paper Essay 1. Discuss potential cross-ethnic, cross-cultural, and cross-class factors that may affect interview validity. How would you handle such an interview? Validity, as applied to cross-ethnic, cross-cultural, and cross-class interview, is a judgment of how well the interview measures what it purports to measure in a particular context. More specifically, it is a judgment based on evidence about the appropriateness of inferences drawn from the interview. Interviews are a very powerful tool. Hence it should be handled correctly to allow full exploration of the subject at hand, including follow-up questions (which take practice and skill to develop). I should do the following: 1. I should â€Å"stick with the program† and address only the intended topic, but sometimes, however, an interview subject will bring up a relevant idea that the researcher had not considered or had discounted. So I should have the ability to pursue this line of reasoning with the subject while maintaining academic rigor is an important skill to have. 2. I will look for patterns of responses that repeat themselves over many different respondents. I should use the mirror questions use an earlier response as a way to generate a follow-up question. Let’s say my interviewee commented, â€Å"I like my job a lot most of the time, but sometimes it’s really a struggle.†So my mirror question back to the respondent would be, â€Å"You said that you like your job most of the time, but sometimes it’s really a struggle. What it is that sometimes happens that makes your job a struggle for you?† This technique accomplishes two very important goals: It lets the subject   know that you are actually paying attention, which will perhaps encourage further interaction with you, and it allows you to delve deeper into the subject’s feelings. Most people aren’t grammarians, but they do tend to use words carefully. 3. Also I should be alert for a difference in the articulateness of the subject. If one participant answers a question much more smoothly than other participants, it could mean that that person has been asked the question several times before, or it could mean that the person has given a lot of thought to the topic. It might help to ask a follow-up question to that effect. It’s recommended that you ask the â€Å"You’ve given this a lot of thought!† question, because it gives the participant credit and makes him or her feel empowered. These hypothetical questions give the opportunity to ask interviewees about how they would react to or feel about an event that could happen. It could be as simple as the following: After you discover that a worker has taken advantage of on-site child care, you ask other employees about possible consequences for them if that service were to no longer be provided free of charge or at all. 4. Finally, I will use summary questions to signal a transition to a new topic area or the end of the interview. They are usually very simple, such as â€Å"Do you feel there’s anything else we should discuss about (the topic) before we move on?† This lets interviewees know that you realize you’re not perfect, that they might know something you don’t, and that you welcome their bringing it to your attention. 2. Given what you read in Chapter 8 in our textbook, design a training program for law enforcement officers teaching interrogation techniques that reduce the errors associated with interviewing. Interrogations are considered to be one of the most important phases of the investigation process. Once a confession statement is obtained during an interrogation it is not easily retracted. In most cases criminal investigators are not trained to believe that false confessions occur and can be easily obtained from suspects but can be prevented given a training program on teaching interrogation techniques that reduce the errors associated with interviewing. Hence, I will design a novel training program with which a highly intense psychological interrogation techniques on the elicitation of true and false confession. First, the interview should begin with confronting the suspect`s guilt by telling the suspect that there is no doubt that he or she is involved in the crime. Next, the enforcement officers should developed â€Å"themes† that would justify the criminal act- a way to rationalize for the crime. An example is the interrogator should suggest to the suspect that the victim was responsible for the crime because of his or her behavior. The third step teaches the interrogator to try and interrupt all efforts at denial during the interview. The fourth step of the program advices that the officer should overcome the suspect`s factual, moral, and emotional objections to the charges. At the next step, the interrogator should ensure that the passive suspect does not withdraw. Once the officer detects any indication that the suspect is starting to withdraw, they should immediately act upon it. During this stage on the interview, the investigator should show sympathy and understanding toward the suspect and advises him/her to tell the truth. Next, it is to recommend that the interrogator offer the suspect an alternative explanation for the criminal act. Research question could be â€Å"Did you blow the money on booze, drugs, and women and party with it, or did you need it to help out your family? In step 8 of the program, I suggest that the officer should attempt to get the suspect to describe the details of the crime. If the oral confession from step 8 is successfully obtained during the interrogation, then the step 9 serves to convert the statement just given into a full confession statement. 3. Discuss the 3-level hierarchical model of the modern Binet and compare it to Spearman’s concept of general mental ability. The 3-level hierarchical model of the modern Binet represents a basic theoretical and empirical model of cognitive abilities pursued the dual goal of retaining as many item types as possible from the earlier editions while incorporating current ability constructs. The modern Binet determined the four areas of cognitive ability: verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, abstract/visual reasoning, and short-term memory. The modern Binet also provide a global index of functioning that would represent what is commonly known as ‘g’ or general reasoning ability. These separate areas are the united in a 3-level hierarchical model of intelligence which provided their theoretical model of human intelligence. While Binet assumes that a unitary or pervasive factor (i.e., judgment or adaptation) was the common denominator of human intelligence, Spearman viewed it as a hypothesis yet to be tested. He found that the arrangement of general human abilities could be expressed by a definite mathematical equation (i.e., tetrad) and comparing it to Binet, he has the famous two-factor theory of intelligence. The â€Å"general factor† and denoted by the letter g. The second is known as the â€Å"specific factor† and is denoted by the letter s. Spearman`s main conclusion relating to the presence of g have proved to be sound and its presence in the theoretical model hypothesized for the modern Binet can be tentatively accepted. Further, Spearman recognized that problem solving speed and intelligence were correlated. He did, however, disagree with Binet and Simon`s theoretical position that their tests worked because they measured individually patterned intelligences. For Spearman, a general factor along with specific factors of different magnitudes explained intelligent behavior. 4. Choose one of the WAIS-III subtests and describe possible non-intellective factors that may influence an individual’s performance. The WAIS-III consists of 14 subtests. The WAIS elicits three intelligence   quotient scores, based on an average of 100, as well as subtest and index scores. WAIS subtests measure specific verbal abilities and specific performance abilities. The WAIS elicits an overall intelligence quotient, called the full-scale IQ, as well as a verbal IQ and a performance IQ. The three IQ scores are standardized in such a way that the scores have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. Wechsler pioneered the use of deviation IQ scores, allowing test takers to be compared to others of different as well as the same age. WAIS scores are sometimes converted into percentile ranks. The verbal and performance IQ scores are based on scores on the 14 subtests. The 14 subtest scores have a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of three. The WAIS also elicits four indices, each based on a different set of subtests: verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed. Tasks on the WAIS include questions of general knowledge, traditional   arithmetic problems, a test of vocabulary, completion of pictures with missing elements, arrangements of blocks and pictures, and assembly of objects. picture completion, picture arrangement, block design, object assembly, digit symbol, matrix reasoning, and symbol search. Matrix reasoning and symbol search are new subtests and were added to the most recent edition of the WAIS (WAIS-III). I would like to discuss the picture completion subtest. Here, the test taker is required to complete pictures with missing elements. The picture arrangement subtest entails arranging pictures in order to tell a story. The block design subtest requires test takers to use blocks to make specific designs. The object assembly subtest requires people to assemble pieces in such a way that a whole object is built. In the digit symbol subtest, digits and symbols are presented as pairs and test takers then must pair additional digits and symbols. 6. Discuss the implications of testing infants. What are the advantages and disadvantages of such procedures? In infancy (the period from birth through 18 months), testing consists primarily of measurement of sensorimotor development. This includes, for example, the measurement of nonverbal, motor responses such as turning over, lifting the head, sitting up, following a moving object with the eyes, imitating gestures, and reaching for a group of objects. Hence, the examiner who attempts to assess the intellectual and related abilities of infants must be skillful in establishing and maintaining rapport with examinees who do not yet know the meaning of words like cooperation and patience. Typically, measures of infant intelligence rely to a great degree on information obtained from a structured interview with the examinee’s parents, guardians, or other caretakers. Infant testing, combined with other information (such as birth history, emotional and social history, health history, data on the quality of the physical and emotional environment, and measures of adaptive behavior) have proved useful to health professionals when suspicions about developmental disability and related deficits have been raised. The tests have also proved useful in helping to define the abilities, as well as the extent of disability, in older, psychotic children. Furthermore, the tests have been in use for a number of years by many adoption agencies that will disclose and interpret such information to prospective adoptive parents. Infant tests also have wide application in the area of research and can play a part in selecting infants for specialized early educational experiences or in measuring the outcome of educational, therapeutic, or prenatal care interventions. What is the meaning of a score on an infant intelligence test? Whereas some of the developers of infant tests (such as Cattell, 1940; Gesell et al., 1940) claimed that such tests can predict future intellectual ability because they measure the developmental precursors to such ability, others have insisted that performance on such tests at best reflects the infant’s physical and neuropsychological intactness. The research literature supports a middle ground between these extreme positions. In general, the tests have not been found to predict performance on child or adult intelligence tests—tests that tap vastly different types of abilities and thought processes. The predictive ability of infant intelligence tests does tend to increase with the extremes of the infant’s performance. The test interpreter can say with authority more about the future performance of an infant whose performance was either profoundly below age expectancy or significantly precocious. References Psychological Testing: Principles, Applications and Issues (7th ed.) by Robert M. Kaplan and Dennis P. Saccuzzo. Published by Thomson Wadsworth.