Blanton Hart, Jaccard James
Department of PsychologyUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Am Psychol. 2006 Jan;61(1):27-41. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.61.1.27.
Many psychological tests have arbitrary metrics but are appropriate for testing psychological theories. Metric arbitrariness is a concern, however, when researchers wish to draw inferences about the true, absolute standing of a group or individual on the latent psychological dimension being measured. The authors illustrate this in the context of 2 case studies in which psychologists need to develop inventories with nonarbitrary metrics. One example comes from social psychology, where researchers have begun using the Implicit Association Test to provide the lay public with feedback about their "hidden biases" via popular Internet Web pages. The other example comes from clinical psychology, where researchers often wish to evaluate the real-world importance of interventions. As the authors show, both pursuits require researchers to conduct formal research that makes their metrics nonarbitrary by linking test scores to meaningful real-world events.
许多心理测试采用的是任意度量标准，但适用于检验心理学理论。然而，当研究人员希望推断一个群体或个体在被测量的潜在心理维度上的真实、绝对地位时，度量标准的任意性就成了一个问题。作者在两个案例研究的背景下说明了这一点，在这两个案例中，心理学家需要开发具有非任意度量标准的量表。一个例子来自社会心理学，研究人员已经开始使用内隐联想测验，通过流行的互联网网页为普通大众提供关于他们“隐藏偏见”的反馈。另一个例子来自临床心理学，研究人员经常希望评估干预措施在现实世界中的重要性。正如作者所示，这两种追求都要求研究人员进行正式研究，通过将测试分数与有意义的现实世界事件联系起来，使他们的度量标准具有非任意性。
