title: Does memory contaminate test-retest reliability?
abstract: The Wonderlic Personnel Test (1983) was administered twice over a 3-week period under conditions in which the activity of the second test was experimentally manipulated. Data from 302 undergraduates were analyzed. The standard test-retest reliability coefficient, .872, was not significantly different from the coefficients obtained from three other groups that, on the second test, were each given specific instructions: (a) to reason out the answers (pure reassess condition); (b) to use reasoning, memory of their initial responses, or both (reassess and memory); or (c) to take an alternate form of the test (parallel). However, the standard test-retest reliability coefficient was higher, p less than .10, than the coefficient obtained from a condition (pure memory) in which subjects were instructed to duplicate their previous responses, using only memory. Although the subjects in the test-retest and combined reassess and memory conditions reported recalling previous answers for 20-25% of the items on the second test, it was concluded that conscious repetition of specific responses did not seriously inflate the estimate of test-retest reliability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Bishop's University, Lennoxville, QC, Canada.
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: McKelvie
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010556:Personality Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011594:Psychometrics; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results