Glossary of Psychological Terms
Definitions of terms used in psychology, psychometric testing and occupational assessment, organised alphabetically.
Validity
In logic, validity refers to whether an argument's conclusion follows correctly from its premises, regardless of whether the premises themselves are actually true. In psychological testing specifically, validity refers to whether a test genuinely measures what it claims to measure. See also: construct validity.
Variable
A condition, factor or quantity, typically within an experiment, that is capable of taking different values — whether it changes naturally or is deliberately changed by the researcher. See also: independent variable, dependent variable.
Variance
In statistics, a measure of the spread or dispersion of a set of scores around their mean, calculated as the average of the squared deviations from the mean, and equal to the square of the standard deviation.
Vygotsky test
A test of concept-formation ability requiring a person to sort a series of blocks by colour, shape and size; named after Lev Vygotsky, a leading Russian psychologist and pioneer in studying the relationship between thought, language and intellectual development.
Visual dominance
The tendency, when a person receives conflicting information from different sensory modalities simultaneously, for vision to take precedence over the other senses in shaping perception and judgement.
