Q.Take a test with its manual and read it carefully, and identify the following: Number and type of items; Information about reliability, validity, and norms; Type of test: verbal or otherwise, individual or group; Type of test: Speed, power, or mixed; Any other characteristics. Discuss these with other students and the teacher.

Examining any published psychological test manual (for example, a standard intelligence test) shows how these technical properties are actually reported. …

Reading through a psychological test manual carefully should reveal information organised around the same technical properties described in the chapter.

Number and type of items: The manual should state exactly how many items the test contains and describe their format, for example, a general intelligence test might have 60 items combining verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning and pattern-completion questions.

Reliability, validity and norms: A properly documented manual reports reliability evidence (such as a test-retest correlation coefficient obtained by re-administering the test to the same group after some interval, or a split-half correlation), validity evidence (evidence that the test measures the characteristic it claims to, often shown by correlating it with another already-validated measure of the same characteristic), and norm tables (average scores of a large, representative sample, usually broken down by age group, gender or region), which together let a user correctly interpret any individual's score.

Type by language and administration: The manual will specify whether the test is verbal (requiring literacy in a specific language), non-verbal (using symbols or pictures), or performance-based (requiring the manipulation of objects), and whether it is designed to be administered individually (one test-taker at a time, face-to-face) or to a group simultaneously. …