The Field of Psychometric Evaluations

Formerly the superintendent of Westmoreland County Public Schools, Rebecca Lowry also served in an administrative role with the Cleveland Municipal School District. Now working as a school psychologist for Cumberland Therapies near Dayton, Ohio, Rebecca Lowry has an extensive background in psychometrics and program evaluation. 

Psychometrics describes a systematic approach to assessing a person's mental abilities and thought processes through scientific evaluations. Encompassing intelligence, aptitude, and personality tests, psychometric evaluations give us a better understanding of how the mind works and how one individual’s abilities compare to another’s. 

One of the earliest attempts at making psychometric evaluations was the Binet-Simon Intelligence Test, developed in 1908, then improved in 1916 and renamed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. Although the original test has been adapted slightly over the last century, the same scale is still in use today to measure a person’s intelligence quotient, or IQ. 

Personality tests are another common type of psychometric evaluation, which collect data by gauging an individual's response to certain hypothetical situations. The tests are designed to reveal a person’s dominant personality traits by analyzing how they respond to various scenarios.