(a) "Some psychological measures can be reliable but not valid". Elaborate it with examples. (10 marks) (b) IQ scores predict…

(a) Reliable but not valid Reliability is the consistency of a measure across occasions, raters or items. Validity is whether it measures what it claims to measure. Consistency is necessary for validity but does not guarantee it.

• A bathroom scale that always reads 5 kg low gives identical readings every time (high test-retest reliability) but is not valid for true weight.
• Head circumference as a measure of intelligence is highly reliable (stable, high inter-rater agreement) but has little criterion or construct validity.
• A badly designed ability test may consistently tap test anxiety or reading speed. It shows high internal consistency but fails to predict the ability it claims to assess.

A measure that is unreliable cannot be valid, but a reliable one may still be invalid.

(b) IQ and life outcomes IQ is a well-established predictor. Schmidt and Hunter's meta-analyses give correlations of about 0.51 with job performance and 0.56 with job training, higher for complex jobs. IQ also correlates about 0.5 with school achievement, and positively with health literacy and occupational attainment.

However, IQ explains only part of the variance in outcomes. Conscientiousness, grit, emotional intelligence, motivation and creativity add incremental prediction. Scores are also affected by socio-economic status, schooling, language and test familiarity; in India, coaching and unequal access to schooling can distort scores. Correlations are modest for the highest-performing groups.

IQ is a useful but insufficient predictor and should be combined with other measures.

(c) Self-efficacy and its benefits Self-efficacy (Bandura) is a person's belief in their capability to organise and carry out the actions needed to reach a goal. It is built through mastery experiences, vicarious learning, verbal persuasion and interpretation of physiological states.

Benefits of enhancing it:

• Higher goal-setting, effort and persistence in the face of failure, and better academic and work performance.
• Better stress coping and lower anxiety and burnout, since demands are appraised as challenges.
• Better health behaviour, such as adherence to treatment and giving up substances.
• Lower vulnerability to depression through a stronger sense of agency.

(d) Formal operational thought is not universal Piaget saw formal operations (hypothetico-deductive reasoning, propositional logic, abstract thinking) as the final stage, reached from about 11–12 years in all normal children.

Evidence contradicts universality. Cross-cultural work (Cole with the Kpelle; Dasen's reviews, including Aboriginal Australians) found that adults in non-schooled settings often perform below formal-operational level on Piagetian tasks, though they succeed with familiar, meaningful content. Even in industrial societies, many adults use formal reasoning only in areas of expertise. Performance depends on schooling, literacy, task familiarity and culture (Vygotsky), so formal thought is better seen as a culturally and educationally cultivated, domain-specific skill. Piaget himself later conceded that it depends on one's field of aptitude and experience.

(e) Aptitude tests for predicting professions in high school Strengths: aptitude batteries (such as the DAT) give an objective, standardised profile of strengths and help with counselling.

Criticisms:

• Adolescents' abilities, interests and self-concept are still developing, so predictions made at this stage are unstable.
• Predictive validity for specific professions is modest, and success also depends on interest, motivation and opportunity.
• Norms and items can be biased by language, urban background and socio-economic status, disadvantaging vernacular-medium and rural students.
• Labels can create self-fulfilling prophecies and premature career foreclosure.

Aptitude results should be one input in comprehensive counselling alongside interests, personality, values and opportunities, not a deterministic verdict.