Bias in Psychological Assessment: An Empirical Review and Recommendations

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors present a multifaceted treatment of the persistent controversy over ethnic bias in ability tests. After introducing the controversy and the widely misunderstood concept of bias, we address objections to tests and testing raised by minority advocacy groups and explore the origins of such objections. We touch upon proposed sources of test bias, such as differential predictive validity and inequitable social consequences of testing. Next, we distinguish bias from similar concepts: unfairness, offensiveness, culture fairness, and culture loadedness. We also distinguish similar controversies, such as the etiology of putative ethnic differences. The crux of the test bias debate is intergroup score differences observed for over a century. Authors have proposed numerous explanations for these differences, primarily social inequalities, genetic potential, an interaction between the two, and test bias. Some authors have assumed a priori that any mean ethnic difference in ability scores must result from bias. We evaluate the merits of these approaches, particularly the latter, before reviewing the bias literature. Our review includes predictive, construct, and content bias and related issues such as situational bias. Results provide little evidence for substantial ethnic test bias. We conclude, in part, with recommendations for clinicians, researchers, and others.

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“…Likewise, the information which was obtained through the application of this methodology goes far beyond what would be achieved if only descriptive statistics were applied 32 . Despite the contribution of the present study to the psychometric procedures applied to neuropsychological assessment, there are some limitations that must be pointed out: the fact that is a convenience sample constituted only for healthy subjects who volunteered to participated in this test adaptation, although this neuropsychological battery is targeted to MS patients 33 , and the number of participants, particularly the number of participants per list of words (N = 22), restricted the use of IRT procedures to word analyses and selection.…”

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“…ej., Reynolds y Suzuki, 2012;Schellenberg, 2004), lo que muestra la complejidad que envuelve la manera en que las variables etno-culturales interaccionan con las dificultades de aprendizaje individuales (Artiles y Trent, 1994). Así, un estudio reciente alertaba sobre el peligroso efecto de las teorías monolingües persistentes en la escuela en relación al proceso de adquisición de la lectoescritura, bajo las cuales se tiende a ver a los lectores bilingües emergentes como alumnado con dificultades (Hopewell y Escamilla, 2014).…”

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“…Essa fórmula permite avaliar se as soluções fatoriais encontradas nesse estudo são similares àquelas descritas no Estudo 1, sendo a constatação de uma estrutura unifatorial; valores de r congruência iguais ou superiores a 0,90 são uma evidência da congruência das soluções fatoriais (Reynolds & Ramsey, 2003).…”