An overview of historical antecedents of psychological tests is essential to understand present-day tests. Although the widespread use of psychological testing is largely a phenomenon of the twentieth century, historians note that rudimentary forms of testing date back to Vedic periods of India. The History of India begins with the Indus Valley Civilization and the coming of the Aryans. These two phases are generally described as the pre-Vedic and Vedic periods. In Vedic periods, daughters of kings or emperors assigned performance tests to the willing candidates before wedding to her. The selection procedures were very systematic and candidates showed their competencies in different manners. We know about vedic periods from Rig Veda which was composed between 1,500 B.C. and 1,000 B.C.
PSYCHOLOGY IN INDIA BEFORE INDEPENDENCE
The early years of 20th century witnessed the dawn of Psychology in India. Psychology as a discipline, at that time already attained its foothold in Europe. Researches in psychology were also gaining its popularity in United States of America. Great visionaries and educationists in India also foresee the prospects of this new forte of knowledge. Renowned educationist and the then Vice chancellor of Calcutta University, Sir Asutosh Mookerjee planned to include “Experimental Psychology” in the post graduate courses of Calcutta University. At his request Dr. Brojendro Nath Seal, Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy formed the syllabus in 1905 after consulting the course studies of Various European and American universities. Asia at about the same time was observing the emergence of its first psychology laboratory in the University of Tokyo, Japan.
PRE-REQUISITES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING
Over the last century, a large number of psychological tests have been designed to assess ability, aptitude, personality, attitude, interests etc. These are widely used for decision making in clinical and non-clinical settings. It is misnomer to assume that psychological test is for obtaining information about people. It is more than that. It is a device to gauge inter and intra individual differences in psychological traits. Therefore, the test should be reliable, valid, standardized and norm referenced. Following pre-requisites will help test administrator, test data interpreter and test developer in different ways.
COGNITIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED
India is now home to the world's largest number of blind people. Of the 37 million people across the globe who are blind, over 15 million are from India. Therefore, there is a huge need of psychological tests and trained administrator for assessing different psychological abnormalities among blind. Langley (1979) had observed, “Few psychologists are trained to assess normal infants, and even fewer are trained to assess individuals who may function as infants and also manifest some severe form of visual impairment or other sensory or physical deficit.” Increasingly assessment of visually handicapped is being regarded as a complex process which calls for the involvement of professionals from different areas of expertise and experience, a process in which parents and teachers can also rightfully play an active and important role, in view of their extended contact with the individual. As blind people are impaired in vision, attention should be paid to the specific procedures of test administration.
GUIDELINES FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST ADAPTATION
Test translation and test adaptation are the two main problems linked with cross-cultural/cross national testing (Butcher and Garcia, 1978). With the increasing interest in cross-cultural research and international exchange of tests, there is a growing need for adapting psychological tests. Test adaptation assists both respondents and researchers. It helps respondents of different cultures to respond with near equal extent of accuracy in terms of measuring underlying domains. The process can generally be less costly than item construction, validation, and norm development of a new test can take several years and require substantial amounts of money and time. Researcher can develop theory on adapted test for cross-national, cross-language, or cross-ethnic comparative studies, and of course they can be made available to clinicians for patient evaluation.
PSYCHOINFORMATICS : INNOVATION IN MINING RANODOMIZED DATA
With rapid, randomized digitalized and non digitalized information explosion, problems of psychology are moving from bounded psychology arena to unbounded psychology. Bounded psychology refers to knowing psychology through responses controlled by the experimenter or test constructor. Knowing psychology through randomized responses or data is called unbounded psychology. Knowing psychology through predetermined hypotheses limits our knowledge to pre-assumed psychological traits. This causes serious problem to gauge all determinants of individual differences in behaviour. Psychoinformatics is a technique through which we can mine data in any form and can develop pattern based on relations among data. The pattern finally reflects specific psychological traits. It uses computer databases to store, retrieve and assist in understanding psychological information. Data warehouse, data retrieving, data mining, pattern recognition and discovery of knowledge are five basic principles of psycho-informatics. Psychoinformatics is different from Bioinformatics where in biological information is used for classification. Common example of bioinformatics is storing human DNA finger printing for classification of individuals.
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