Psychological Testing & Privacy Issue

In this paper we will take a closer look at the concepts of privacy and confidentiality as they relate to psychological testing. We will also examine some of the guidelines within the psychological community, as well as some of the relevant legislation and litigation.

The right to privacy has been defined as an individuals right to choose the extent to which he discloses his attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and actions to another person (Anastasi, 1982; Cohen et al., 1988). Thus, to the extent that some psychological tests are constructed in such a way that the individual taking them may not be aware that he is revealing certain information about himself, the tests are clearly an invasion of that person's privacy. However, it must be noted that we all unwittingly or unwillingly reveal information about ourselves in less formal

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is institutional testing. Anastasi (1982) argues that the examinee should be informed of the nature of the test and the use that will be made of the results in these situations. Naturally, if the test has to do with employment, it should not ask any questions which are considered discriminatory under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (such as marital status, age, race, religion, etc.) and if the individual does not give consent, the results must not be disseminated. The issue here is more one of confidentiality than of privacy, which we will discuss in more detail later. Two last concepts related to the right of privacy are relevance and informed consent. Relevance in this context involves the principle that all information that the individual is asked to reveal should be relevant to the stated purpose of the test. In other words, the test items must be scientifically valid. It is also important for the examiner to interpret the scores correctly and not make any unwarranted inferences from them or attach any unnecessarily stigmatizing labels to the person (Anastasi, 1982; Graham & Lilly, 1984). The concept of informed consent is crucial in the resolution of the conflict between the values of individual privacy and f
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Approximate Word count = 1684
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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