WHY DO SOME TEST QUESTIONS APPEAR SO SIMPLE OR POINTLESS?
Take as an example some statements that might appear on a test that assesses emotional distress. What does it mean if someone answers Yes to the statement: My thoughts are often jumbled. Anybody could feel like that one day and not the next. The truth is, a feeling that ones thoughts are jumbled does not mean much by itself. But now what if the person also answered Yes to the statements, It seems like I am always tired, I often feel guilty, and I usually wish people would just leave me by myself. Like the jumbled thoughts example, these are statements that, taken singly, each of us could probably have endorsed at some point or other. On the other hand, if an individual responded Yes to all these statements, a mental health providers attention might be drawn to potentially serious concerns. Other kinds of tests will ask very different kinds of questions, yet there will often be the same sense that individual questions do not seem important. A test does two things with questions such as
