PEER REVIEW: The Case of Claire Standish
Your essay based on Claire Standish is spot on. What do you think?
Do you think “Claire” may have done outside research on her behaviors and may have taken a “self-help” assessment? How do you see or have witnessed in your experience some bias in these types of assessments?
Reply to the following 2 classmates with constructive feedback that identifies comments that stood out to you along with new analysis, ideas, questions, or other comments that extend their learning and yours.(100 word minimum – no source required)
CLASSMATE #1 Anguiano, Renae J (100 word min + one academic/peer-reviewed source)
Claire’s essay on biases in assessment, the normal curve, and naturalistic observations:
No one understands me or my problems. You don’t have any idea how much pressure I am under all the time. I have always had good grades and high test scores. I am an athlete in gymnastics and cheerleading, and a leader with other students, officially in student government, and unofficially by being very popular. I have to stay fit and attractive to hold these positions. Many athletes purge to keep their weight down. As many as 62% of female athletes in college control their weight by using some kind of eating disorder-type behavior (Black et al., 2003). Many people, including my dad, think this is normal teenage behavior. Also, I feel I am being targeted because I have a few new friends. I am trying to get to know other people outside my normal circle of friends and smoking weed with them is just a way to relax. It’s perfectly harmless and I am not dependent on it. My therapist thinks I am stressed because I have the habit of picking at my eyebrows and eyelashes, yet I am targeted because I try to find ways to relax.
I’m not sure why I was given this assignment because with my background and socioeconomic status, I should do just fine on assessments of any kind, psychological, educational, or placement. Most bias is culturally, racially, or ethnically based, which does not apply to me. Construct bias has to do with misunderstanding references and definitions because they do not apply to different cultures. Method bias is caused by the instrument itself or the way the test is administered to different groups. Item bias shows up when there is a difference in language and cultural references. Predictive bias is a problem when there are different predictive results across subgroups. Based on race or language barriers, there are several reasons why bias in testing can be a problem. First, the overdiagnosis of psychiatric clients, second, college admission may be limited for some based on standardized tests, and third, denial of employment based on testing (Reynolds & Suzuki, 2012). Additionally, members of minority groups often fear testing because of the possibility of reinforcing stereotypes (Reynolds & Suzuki, 2012).
I’m pretty sure I would fall within the normal range of testing for problems and pressures of life as a teen. The normal curve or distribution is a natural phenomenon that occurs in statistics, often used in education and other assessments. It is based on a standard score from 1 to 99, with a score of 50 being the national average (Sheperis et al., 2020). Also, observing me in my natural setting of school and home, you may miss the real stresses I have of lack of attention from my parents and the pressure to excel as all my family members seem to do. The problem with naturalistic observations is that you would not be able to explain or understand why certain behaviors happen and you may be biased against me because I come from a wealthy and comfortable home (Cherry, 2022).
CLASSMATE #2 Goros, Jonathan A (100 word min + one academic/peer-reviewed source)
The Case of Claire Standish
The term “assessment” refers to the systemic procedure of collecting information to create inferences and/or decisions about the characteristics of an individual (Sheparis et al., 2020). The term, though seemingly broad in meaning, is the backbone of understanding various aspects of the human population under the lens of psychology. Assessments, though useful, have their inherent biases that plague each corner despite the push to eliminate these biases as much as possible. Biases within assessments include confirmation bias, in which the researcher tends to pick out information that supports their beliefs and ideas, often happening outside of the awareness of the researcher. Another bias within assessment is measurement bias, the lack of a universal and accessible assessment measurement for diverse populations, instead providing clear assessment advantages to specific populations. This all ties into the issue of examiner bias, in which assessments are, overall, limited in their ability to provide sufficient accuracy of the skills and abilities of the examinee due to gender, background, language, and other variations in the examinee compared to the examiner (Sheparis et al., 2020).
With the inclusion of the biases, there is a “normal” and the standard curve in assessments to define what information can be generalized towards a specific bell curve location after the accruing of data from large groups of test-takers. This normal creates a differentiation between what is thought to be the most “normal” of the population versus the groups who are, sadly, placed at disadvantages when assessed merely due to their “non-normal” backgrounds. Theoretically, the normal should be a bell curve of the culmination of data gathered from endless participants, but this data can be fluctuated based on the misrepresentation of those outside the norm of the examiner’s background (Jiao, 2017).
Another issue with assessments is the inclusion of naturalistic observation. Naturalistic observation, while seemingly being the most natural method of obtaining data, is perhaps the most invasive of the means of gathering data and is limited in its ability to be accurate due to the potential influence of bias on the part of the examiners. This form of data collecting can easily be influenced by outside variables outside of the assessment, such as childhood experiences and cultural differences that may be misinterpreted by examiners. This form of data gathering is also subjective to the researchers’ beliefs and ideas of what they perceive in human behavior based on their backgrounds and understanding of human interaction and reaction, thus becoming heavily influenced by biases (Kalso, 2020).
