Originally Posted by NiallNai

In response to what budnkota said: I'm largely in agreement. The tests are only good at testing what they test. And a good psychologist realizes that...or should...When I write statements about a students performance on an IQ tests, the statements are specific to the performance on particular tasks.

In addition, it is really only a snapshot of a persons performance on a particular day. You can only statistically say that if a person were to given the same test that 90-95% of the time they would score within a certain range of the initial score.

Psychology began as a branch of philosophy that wanted to be seen as a science. Since the "material" that we study is ephemeral (for lack of a better term) the only manner in which it can be measured is largely statistical or mathematical. And as my father told me: "there three types of falsehoods in the world: lies, damn lies, and statistics."

The scores are not that are obtained aren't the person. There is just as much information to be gather from observing how the examinee approaches and completes the tasks.