Baremos of the primary mental skills test for Honduran university students

Abstract

The use of normative data regarding psychometric tests plays an important role in decision making. In this sense, the World Health Organization (2011) supports the claim that psychometric test that measure intellectual attributes, offer a guide regarding personal capacities, yet the test should only be used if it has been previously validated in the population in which it is applied. On the other hand, the American Psychological Association (APA) establishes the obligation of respecting the criteria used for constructing the test, including its application, scoring and interpretation. However, it is inconvenient to use normative test criteria when they are used to explain the results obtained in different contexts and population than the ones considered in the test construction. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to construct the normative data for Honduran university students, regarding the Primary Mental Abilities Test (PMA). The sample included 2588 students, from which 63.3 % were women and 36.7 % men. The data was recollected during the third academic term of 2014 as well as the first and second term of 2015, samples were taken from different campuses, which included Ciudad Universitaria, UNAH-Valle de Sula, CURLA and CURLP. Central tendency and dispersion statistics were calculated for each of the Afterwards the raw data was transformed into percentiles; normative data was created for the general population, as well as for gender. T test and ANOVA were used to evaluate the differences by gender, secondary education modality, university campus and age. In order to compare the percentile scores between the normative data constructed in this study with the Spanish dataset, a subsample consisting of 1987 subjects, from both genders, was taken into account. The scores were compared using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, which reflected statistical significant differences in the five PMA subtests, which indicate lower percentiles regarding the raw scores converted from the Spanish normative data.

Revista Ciencia y Tecnología No.19, diciembre 2016, p.198-227