PSYCH 660 Week 4 Ethics in Assessment Example

Can a High School Use Our Research Questionnaire to Flag Depressed Students? Ethics of Test Use Outside Its Validation

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/660: Ethics and Professional Issues

Week 4 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The lab, the school and the questionnaire request are composites written for a model paper; standards and research findings come from the sources listed.

A good test can point a counselor toward the students who most need help; the same test pressed into a job it was never built for can tag the wrong students and burn through a counselor's week. This paper examines a request my lab received from a partner high school.

The Request

Our university sleep lab in Tucson developed a twelve-item questionnaire that participants in our teen sleep study complete each morning, rating mood, energy, irritability and worry on a five-point scale. The items were adapted from longer measures and chosen to be quick and sensitive to day-to-day change. After hearing about our study, the counselor at one partner high school asked whether the school could give the questionnaire to all ninth graders during homeroom and refer students with high total scores to counseling. She explained that the school had one counselor for 450 students and wanted a quick way to find those who were struggling.

What the Questionnaire Was Built For

The questionnaire's purpose was to track within-person changes in mood across days for research. We examined its internal consistency and its relationship with sleep, but we never tested whether a high score identified students with depression or other conditions, never set a cutoff and never studied it in a general school population. It has no norms.

Validity for a New Use

Under the joint testing standards (American Educational Research Association et al., 2014), validity concerns specific interpretations and uses of scores and that when a test is used for a purpose not previously validated, the user is responsible for providing evidence supporting the new use. Screening requires evidence of classification accuracy: how well a cutoff identifies people who have a condition, sensitivity, and how well it clears people who do not, specificity. Our questionnaire has no such evidence.

The APA Ethics Code (American Psychological Association, 2017) similarly requires psychologists to use assessment instruments in ways and for purposes supported by research and to use instruments whose validity has been established for the population tested, or to describe the limits of results when it has not.

Who Would Interpret the Scores?

Turner et al. (2001) presented APA's guidelines for test user qualifications, describing the knowledge and skills needed to use tests responsibly. Core qualifications include knowledge of psychometrics and measurement, such as reliability, validity and norms; selection of appropriate tests; administration and scoring; interpretation in light of the person's background; and communication of results. The guidelines also describe qualifications for specific contexts, including educational settings, and emphasize that users should understand the limits of the tests they use.

In the school's plan, homeroom teachers would administer the questionnaire and a staff member would total scores. Neither has training in interpreting mood measures, and the school counselor, though trained, would have hundreds of results to review.

A score of thirty-eight on our questionnaire means "a hard week" in our study; no one knows what it means for a ninth grader in homeroom.

Consequences for Students

Screening has consequences. False positives, students flagged who are not depressed, could mean unnecessary meetings, worry for families and stigma. False negatives, students missed, could give false reassurance. And if many students are flagged, a single counselor could not respond to all of them, leaving flagged students without help.

After weighing the studies, a federal panel endorsed checking teenagers from twelve to eighteen for major depression (Siu & U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, 2016), with a condition attached: a school or clinic must first have a way to confirm the diagnosis, treat it and check back. The task force found evidence that established screening instruments perform reasonably well in adolescents and that treatments are effective, but it emphasized that screening without these systems is unlikely to help.

The Counselor's Legitimate Need

The counselor's request came from a real problem. With one counselor for 450 students, struggling students can go unnoticed until a crisis, and teachers often refer only the students whose distress shows as disruptive behavior. Quiet, withdrawn students, often girls with depression, are easily missed. Screening could help find them. The ethical problem was not the goal but the tool and the missing system around it. A response that only said no would have left the counselor with the same problem and no better way to address it.

Base Rates and False Alarms

Even a good screening tool produces false positives, and the problem grows when the condition is relatively uncommon. If roughly one in ten ninth graders has significant depression and a screen correctly identifies most of them but also flags a portion of students who are not depressed, the flagged group will include many students without depression. With a research questionnaire of unknown accuracy, the share of false alarms could be much larger. Each flagged student needs follow-up, so false alarms consume the counselor's limited time.

Consent and Privacy

Universal screening in schools also raises consent issues. Parents typically must be informed and given the opportunity to opt out or must give active consent, depending on district policy and law. Students should know how their answers will be used and who will see them. Results are sensitive and must be protected under school privacy rules.

A Better Path

I recommended against using our research questionnaire for screening and offered alternatives. First, the school could adopt an established adolescent depression screening measure with published evidence of accuracy in adolescents, such as a short version of a widely used patient health questionnaire adapted for teens. Second, screening should be administered and interpreted by trained staff, with the school counselor supervised by a licensed school psychologist from the district. Third, before screening, the school should arrange a referral pathway with the community mental health center so flagged students can be evaluated and treated promptly. Fourth, parents should receive information and the chance to opt out, and students should be told how results will be used.

Our lab offered to help the school evaluate the screening program by analyzing anonymized results and follow-up rates.

The Lab's Own Responsibility

The request also raised a question about the lab's responsibility for its instrument. Once a measure is shared, researchers lose some control over how it is used. Standard 9.07 of the ethics code cautions psychologists against promoting the use of assessment techniques by unqualified persons. To reduce the chance of misuse, our lab added a note to the questionnaire's documentation stating that it is a research measure without norms or cutoffs and should not be used to classify individuals.

The Outcome

The school worked with the district's school psychologist and adopted an established screening tool for ninth graders, after arranging same-week appointments with a community clinic for students scoring above the cutoff.

Conclusion

Using a research questionnaire to flag students would have stretched it beyond its validated purpose, placed interpretation in untrained hands and risked flagging students without help available. Ethical standards for test use and evidence on adolescent screening support a different path: an established tool, qualified interpreters, consent and a system ready to respond.

References

American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education. (2014). Standards for educational and psychological testing. American Educational Research Association.

American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2002, amended effective June 1, 2010, and January 1, 2017). https://www.apa.org/ethics/code

Siu, A. L., & U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. (2016). Screening for depression in children and adolescents: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation statement. Annals of Internal Medicine, 164(5), 360-366. https://doi.org/10.7326/M15-2957

Turner, S. M., DeMers, S. T., Fox, H. R., & Reed, G. M. (2001). APA's guidelines for test user qualifications: An executive summary. American Psychologist, 56(12), 1099-1113. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.12.1099