TEST REVIEW: Inventory for Counseling and Development

1. Title: Inventory for Counseling and Development.

2. Authors: Norman S. Giddan, F. Reid Creech, & Victor R. Lovell.

3. Publisher: National Computer Systems, Inc., P.O. Box 1416, Minneapolis, MN 55440.

4. Forms; groups to which applicable: Form F (1988 revision) to be used with either incoming or cu students.

5. Practical features: There are 449 concisely written true-false items constructed to be sensitive to women minorities. High school level reading comprehension skills are needed.

6. General type: Multiscale personality inventory.

7. Date of publication: The current version (Form F) was published in 1988. Previous versions were published 1983 and 1987.

8. Cost: Booklet, answer sheet: (1996 prices) $12.95 per manual, $13.95 per 10 reusable booklets, handscoring key set, $89.95 per 100 handscoring answer and profile sheets, $14 per 25 microtest answer sheets.

9. Scoring services available and cost: Computerized scoring is available: $5.95 for mail-in scoring, $9.50 for mail scoring and interpretation. A Microtest scoring and interpretive program is available for an $89.00 annual fee plus $8.50 for each computer generated interpretive report.

10. Time required: Approximately 60 minutes for administration and 30 minutes for scoring and interpretation.

11. Purpose for which evaluated: Career development and academic planning of college students. The ICD also shows promise for interpersonal counseling intervention planning.

12. Description of test items, scoring: 449 true-false items comprise 23 scales clustered into three categories: (a) Agreement, Favorable impression, and Infrequent comprised the validity scales; (b) Insecurity, Alienation, Exam Tension, Ambition, Persistence, Practicality, Sociability, Teacher-Student Interaction, Intellectuality, Originality, Adaptability, Orderliness, Liberal-Conservative, Socio-Political Interest, and Sexual Beliefs comprised the substantive scales; and (c) Sex Role Differences, Academic Performance, Academic Excellence, Academic Capacity, and Academic Motivation comprised the criterion scales. Scoring can be accomplished by hand, microcomputer, or machine-scored by the publisher.

13. Author’s purpose and basis for selecting items: To insure individual personality differences among students from a late adolescent to early adulthood developmental perspective. Items were designed to facilitate selection of career and academic planning, counseling strategies and development of learning strategies for college students.

14. Adequacy of directions, training required to administer: Administration and scoring directions are easy to follow. A college instructor or admissions counselor could easily handle administration.

15. Mental functions or traits represents in each score, whether relevant or sources of invalidity: 'The validity scales measure test taking attitudes, response style, and other unusual test taking practices such as random responding' (Giddan, Creech, & Lovell, 1988, p. 9). The substantive scales were conceptually or theoretically based, or deemed meaningful in the psychological understanding of college students in late adolescence through early adulthood.

16. Comments regarding test design: Items require a true or false response. Because the items measure personal beliefs values and perceptions there is no reason to leave items unanswered. Protocols with 60 or more items left unanswered are not interpreted.

17. Validation against criteria: The manual summarizes validity studies regarding Alienation (n=32), Teacher-Student Interaction (n=327), Creativity (n=8 creative and 2,071 other students), Student Activism (n=21 student activists and 2,058 other students), and Academic Performance (n=711; correlated with Stanford freshman GPA). The small number of subjects for several of these studies mandate interpretive caution and further study.

18. Other empirical evidence indicating what the test measures: The authors attempted to establish construct validity by correlating scales of the ICD with scales of the Strong-Campbell Interest inventory, Career Assessment Inventory, Self-Description Inventory, and Personality Description Inventory. While this information is helpful, the authors did, not provide a conceptual link between those scales which correlated highest. In addition, an indication of which correlations obtained statistical significance was omitted. More information is needed regarding construct validity as sample n's were low (80-166) and inter-test correlations are only one method of substantiating construct validity.

19. Comments regarding fairness: items were designed to reflect sensitivity to women and ethnic minorities (Salazar- Lui, Andberg, Michelucci & Giddan, 1994-5).

20. Comments regarding validity for particular purposes: The ICD appears to display an adequate degree of validity for assessing academic, personal, and social functioning of college students. In particular, the Academic Performance scale appears useful in predicting long-term final college grades of men (r=.37, n=129) and women (r=.41 n=120) as well as differentiating between groups of college students on the basis of enrollment status and academic performance (Giddan, Jurs, Andberg, & Bunnell, 1996).

21. Generalizability (procedure, cases, results): Not reported in the manual. A study by Salazar-Lui et al. (1994-5) reported significant cross-cultural differences for all substantive scales except Intellectuality and Sociopolitical Interest among Taiwanese (n=57), Filipino (n=104) and U.S. (n=1180) college students.

22. Long-term stability. Two test-retest reliability studies at three-week (n=66) and seven-week (n=61) intervals resulted in individual scale reliability ranges of .46-.88 (Mdn=.73) and .55-.89 (Mdn=.79), respectively. KR-20 estimates for the Form F standardization sample were not reported in the manual. KR-20 estimates for Form D were generally in the .70s to .80s.

23. Norms (type of scale, selection of sample): Form F standardization involved responses of a convenience sample of 660 female and 520 male college undergraduates from primarily seven universities. No additional sample characteristics were provided. T-scores and percentile ranks were derived for interpretation.

24. Comments regarding adequacy & above for particular purpose: No evidence of standardization sample representativeness was provided beyond gender of the students. It is unlikely the institutions selected for inclusion have students representative of the broad range of undergraduate institutions. This is impossible to evaluate given the lack of information in the manual. Until such information is made available, caution is warranted in interpreting protocols of ethnic minorities or community college students. These populations appeared to be underrepresented in the standardization sample.

25. Aids to user: A number of helpful case studies were provided in the manual to facilitate interpretation. For an additional fee, the publisher can perform computerized scoring and interpretation.

26. Comments of reviewers: Raju (1992) concluded:

Overall, the ICD is a solid psychometric instrument for assessing the academic, personal, and social functioning of college students. The research base for the ICD is impressive, with detailed documentation about its development, reliability, validity, and standardization. Empirical as well as theory-based claims of validity for the ICD scales are carefully summarized to minimize the potential misinterpretation of scale scores. (p. 414)

Additionally, Sanford (1992) concluded:

The Inventory for Counseling and Development is an excellent test that has undergone extensive psychometric and theoretical development and comes at a time when many universities are under fire concerning their admissions procedures. The ICD offers an objective measure of nonintellective factors empirically related to academic performance and has been developed to enhance the prediction of academic success within a university and to aid in the planning and counseling of students. Once specific studies are undertaken to examine the effect of the inclusion of the ICD results in selection decisions, admissions officers may be able to improve the selection process. (p. 415)

27. General evaluation: The ICD is a multiscale inventory of academic, personal and social functioning which provided substantial documentation of adequate technical characteristics, including reliability, validity, standardization, and development. The infusion of both theoretical and empirical strategies underlying its development, and wide range of personality scales and academic criteria, make the ICD a valuable addition to the area of career and academic assessment and counseling with college students. While the ICD appears reliable and valid for the purposes stated above, it is unfortunate that important technical (KR-20s) and descriptive (sample characteristics) information were omitted from the Form F manual. In addition, further criterion-related and construct validity studies are needed to enhance the generalizability of scale results. The case studies and clear writing style make the manual user-friendly and the optional group administration format makes the ICD a time-efficient instrument.

References

Giddan, N. S., Creech, F. R., & Lovell, V. R. (1988). Manual for the Inventory for Counseling and Development. Minneapolis, MN National Computer Systems, Inc.

Giddan, N. S., Jurs, S. G., Andberg, M., & Bunnell, P. (1996). Noncognitive long-term predictions of college grades by the Academic Performance scale. Assessment, .3(1), 91-98.

Raju, N. S. (1992). Review of the inventory for Counseling and Development. In J. J. Kramer & J. C. Conoley (Eds.), The eleventh mental measurements yearbook (pp. 413-414). Lincoln, NB. University of Nebraska Press.

Salazar-Lui, E., Andberg, M., Michelucci, E., & Giddan, N. (1994-5). Cross-cultural comparison of college students in Taiwan, Philippines, and the United States on the Inventory for Counseling and Development. CACD, 15, 17-24.

Sanford, E. E. (1992). Review of the inventory for Counseling and Development. In J. J. Kramer & J. C. Conoley (Eds.), The eleventh mental measurements yearbook (pp. 414-415). Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.

Last update: May 3, 2001
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