Re: teaching qualifications

[G. Marc Turner]

In my opinion, it depends on the emphasis you want to put in the course. I think anyone that teaches the course should have a strong background in the principles of measurement and scale construction. Okay, since my training is in psychometrics, I am a bit biased and put most of the emphasis on those issues :) The only reason I see for needing a degree in clinical/counseling is if you want to use certain instruments common to those areas in class. You can teach about the MMPI and have students review evaluations and critiques of it without having to actually use it. My approach is that if a student can learn the skills of evaluating and creating instruments, they can read the instruction manuals of other tests if they need to use them.

On the other hand, if you want to put the emphasis more on the testing and less on the measurement, then the background in clinical/counseling would perhaps be more beneficial... it just isn't the way I choose to do it.

Oh, and all this is in relation to undergraduate courses. At the graduate level I think it is even more important to give students the measurement background, but depending on the program additional emphasis on testing might be appropriate.

- Marc




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G. Marc Turner, MEd, Network+, MCP
Instructor & Head of Computer Operations
Department of Psychology
Southwest Texas State University
San Marcos, TX 78666
phone: (512)245-2526
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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