Study for finals: Psychometrics

My notes read:

When you use the test as a predictor, your calculation for a true positive will change, the rest will remain the same. This is the only cell that will change, the rest will be calculated exactly the same.

Holy shit, um, what?

By adding assessment information, you are going to calculate the Probability of True positive = Base Rate multiplied by the selection rate + the ratio of your test score to the outcome measure multiplied by the square root of the Base rate time 1 minus the base rate times the selection rate times 1 minus the selection rate.

P(TP) = BR x SR + (rXY) square root of [BR(1 – BR) SR (1-SR)]

And this is why I will never work in I/O psychology, I don’t care HOW much money they make.

So the only time you’re going to have a larger shift to a true positive is when you have a really large correlation between your test and the eventual outcome measure.

Kill me.

Thanksgiving update

I didn't kill anyone!!!!

The Menu Is Set

Wine and Cheese

Spinach Salad with candied pecans and blue cheese

Cider Brined and Glazed Turkey

Stuffing with Bacon, Apples, Sage, and Caramelized Onions

Cranberry Sauce with Port and Cinnamon

Bourbon Pecan Sweet Potato Mash

Brussels sprout hash with caramelized shallots

Roasted fennel with olives and garlic

Fresh fruit and rum trifle

You should come over.

Still not helpful

My mother in law, bless her heart, gave me some advice about hostessing my first thanksgiving this week. When I mentioned that I was nervous about cooking the turkey (and seriously, this is not my first time roasting a bird, I'm just trying to decide whether or not to butterfly the damn thing or not), she murmured her commiseration and then parted these words of wisdom:

"Look up a recipe."

So that ranks right up there with the time she wisely advised me to look in the fridge to see what I need before I head to the grocery store.

It's like being married to the son of Buddha.

Not sure what I think...

a lot of my classmates from my master's programs are now working in private practice, doing counseling around life transition issues, poor self esteem, career counseling, etc.

That's awesome. I'm happy for them. They're actually earning a living in the thing we went to school for. I just can't imagine doing it myself. I mean, I'm sure they're getting supervision towards licensure (right)? But I had to return to school because I felt like there was still so much to learn - and either I'm right or I'm wrong and I'm sufficiently resolving the cognitive dissonance. But I would just not feel qualified to be sitting across from someone being their therapist (despite the fact that I just did that for the last year).

But being a therapist isn't the same as being a psychologist. This psyD program isn't just more of the same from my master's program. I'm working towards something very different now. I have a good foundational knowledge in psychology and counseling, and it got me out of a couple of basic classes (but fewer than you'd expect), but there is a lot of stuff in this doctoral program that is COMPLETELY flying over my head and which I should be working on right now rather than blogging.

I'm focused on trying to understand multi-trait, multi-method matrices right now. I know, I have no idea either. And classical reliability theory, and item response theory? I mean, do I really need to know this shit, or is it like statistics, that I'm just going to turn it over to some stats geek at the office if I'm actually faced with it.

But here's the thing with being a psychologist: we actually do very little talky-talky psychotherapy. Psychologists specialize more in assessment, program evaluation, supervision, and consultation. (research too). And if you're specializing in assessment? you need to know psychometrics.

Which means I need to get off the couch and go back to my desk and bury myself in convergent validity determination. Gah.

Now there's a velvet rope

I've decided, just to be prudent, and to make my father sleep better at night, to make this blog open to invited readers only. Of course, you're ALL invited. But I'd feel better knowing that I can bitch in peace about my classmates and professors without them stumbling upon it and then becoming an outcast that has to eat her lunch out behind the bleachers, knowing no one is going to invite her to the prom.


Actually, does anyone remember what happened to Harriet the Spy when her friends found her notebook? it's like that.

anyway, as soon as I figure out how to do it....I'm going to be Kaiser Soze. And in an instant she was gone.

Look at that, three metaphors at 9:30 in the morning. This is good coffee.

ps - I'm sending out "invites" (oh this is so snobby) to a few people that I know read this blog on a regular basis. If you don't get one, it's just that I forgot, or I didn't realize you were reading. If you care enough, and I know you do, just send me an email to add you to the list. I'm going to keep the blog open for another day or so, and then the ropes are going up!

Feel better dad?

One more bit of claptrap...

I was exploring various blogger templates (Sassy and Tel link to the site) because one of these days I *am* going to update this site all the way to 2004 and find a template that i like and that reflects my ultramodern sensibilities, and.... anyway, I had the different templates sorted by Most Popular.

And sigh of sighs, two of the top ones were "Wolf in the Night" (which would be really cool with the mural painted on the side of my van), and something like "I Want a Boyfriend."

Oh it just made me sad.

And then I had to wonder, who the hell ARE these people?

Upon further review (uh, just to note: "Black Templates" - not what you think), I also have found that I can download a Bob Saget theme for my blog. Well!, I don't think we need to spend much more time looking for a clear winner, do we.

Woot!!!!

All done with classes!

I have next week off to study for finals (and celebrate the opening salvo in the genocide of the American Indian) and then finals the week after that, and then that's the end of the semester!

Where does the time go?

I have, remarkably, managed to pull this semester out of my ass and it's not such a disaster after all - well, pending finals in two weeks. And from the sounds of it? Finals are going to be a BITCH. Even my professors sounded a little surprised when they mentioned how tough their exams were going to be.

I have one final, for advanced clinical skills, that is supposed to be a mock version of the Clinical Competency Exams we take next year. It's based on a clinical vignette that we're supposed to assess, diagnose, treat, measure outcomes and examine all possible aspects and considerations of a person's life including developmental, social, cultural, ethical, research evidence for our interventions, the etiology of the disorder (theorized or otherwise), the manifestations of the behavior and what sustains it in terms of our personal theoretical orientation. And then a bunch of other shit that i won't go into because honestly I can't remember.

Sigh.

And I'm supposed to be able to do this in two weeks. That just sounds crazy to me. And I have four hours to do it. I don't want to do something THAT FEELS GOOD for four hours. But at least I get to use my notes, readings, and DSM for this final. Next year, when this shit's fer realz? I'm supposed to know it cold.

Yikes.

Other than that, I have Intervention (take home/open book - fine), but then I have my psychopathology exam, which is giving me involuntary twitches, and my psychometrics exam, of which I'm in complete denial.

Re: psychometrics. Most of the time, I have no idea what this class is trying to tell me. For instance, please for to translate into English good for me you see, no:

Independence of methods is a common denominator among the major types of validity (excepting content validity) insofar as they are to be distinguished from reliability.

Insofar?? Insofar? Who the hell says that? Independence of methods is a common denominator? Wha-what? These are the things that I try to pare down into manageable chunks, and then eventually have to admit, you know what, I can't make sense of this. I don't know what this word means when you put it next to that word. GAH.



Oh hey, guess who got food poisoning in Seattle? it's what you call - don't eat the mysterious meat and macaroni salad at a picnic held at a deserted airport hangar on an old military base.

But you probably already knew that rule. Smarty pants.

Just as interesting as what I eat every day.....

has got to be my television viewing habits. I mean, that's why you're tuning into this blog, right?

See if you can guess why I like the Big Bang Theory (BBT) besides the fact that it takes place in Pasadena and the main characters are physicists at Caltech.

As you know, I had determined that I've been watching far too much television, approximately 8.25 hours per week (if you subtract the time it takes to fast forward through the repetitive bits of The Biggest Loser). Resolved to get focused on my studies, I decided to eliminate all "unnecessary" tv viewing from my schedule. However, I elected to eliminate certain shows in a very ad-hoc, arbitrary fashion - including BBT. It was all based on a sort of theoretical, what-can-I-not-live-without evaluation. Very unscientific. A bit slapdash, as we say.


Realizing I needed to be far more empirical, I decided to measure instead the number of times I laughed during each show (Laughs Per Show, or LPS) that I watched. I then determined a weighting for each different type of laugh, ranging from merely a smile (MAS) to a hollering laugh-out-loud moment (HLOL). I also had to include a special rating for the number of SQUEE moments that a show (Squee per Show or SqPS) can bring me - e.g., JAM kissing for the first time (The Office, in case it's not your cup of tea-vee).

And I found something surprising.

BBT totally outranked every other show I watched, including 30 Rock! BBT garnered a whopping 37 HLOL's during last week's 30 minute episode. That's almost 1.95 HLOL's per minute if you subtract the average number of commercial minutes that a 30 minute sitcom contains (which I didn't measure directly this time). I only HLOL'd twice (2x!!) during The Office, although there were 7 MASs and 1 SqpS. And I only HLOL'd 14 times during 30 Rock, but my overabiding love for Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan has to weighed in there somehow, but I've not yet determined how.

Of course, I can't take a single week sample and base my tv viewing habits upon it. I've resolved to measure each week's laughs over a course of several weeks, controlling for sweeps, special guest appearances, repeats, and Most Shocking Weigh-in's Ever. After that, I will be able to take the averages and perform an MANOVA statistical analysis between the different shows.

However, one also needs to consider the validity and reliability of my measuring instrument (LPS) - this is where psychometrics comes in. Is LPS an accurate and thorough measure of my tv viewing enjoyment? Do its items "hang together" enough? Would its results show predictive validity? And what is it I'm trying to capture = is it enough to look for humor in a show? It would not capture, say, my enjoyment for The Biggest Loser or Life, neither of which are laughter based. Also, does the measure show temporal stability and interrater reliability? - i.e., do I, as the sole measurer, vary so much from week to week, day to day, that what makes me laugh one day, might not make me laugh the next day? And how would I test for this, as I could not be expected to HLOL at something when I see it during repeat, so a test/retest evaluation would not be sufficient?

You can see the bind I'm in.

But it looks like BBTs topping the list right now. And not just because I get to squeal "you do! you do have to drive over speed bumps if you take Euclid to Caltech! it would take too long!!"

I love geeks. So much I like to pretend to be one.

Why I should be allowed to bring a tranquilizers to class...

It's that time of year when everyone's making their big fancy power point presentations. And...you know, my classmates are just as cute as bunny rabbits, but a couple of them could stand to improve their presentation skills.

I could use the tranquilizer dart on myself. In extreme cases, I might train it on the presenters, but what if I just graze them and they just speak softer and get more boring and slow? UGH.

It's not even just your usual, I'm-going-to-just-read-my-slides-to-you-in-monotone nonsense, even though there's plenty of that. There is, for instance, the student that learned to make transitions and use animation so EVERYTHING! IS! ANIMATED!
Or there's the student that likes kittens so, and I shit you not, every slide in the presentation on chronic pain assessment had multiple pictures of ....kittens! Kittens! Adorable! I don't know a damn thing about the validity and reliability behind chronic pain measurement, but I sure know that I want a new kitten! And don't even get me started on the one student who, while a very brilliant member of class, speaks english as a second language and so not only read us the slides, but had to slowwwwwly sound out every other word. 45 minutes into that, my professor finally cut the presentation off.

And when you have to sit through SEVEN of them like this in a row?

You know, I didn't think anything could ever be worse than the Shakespeare professor I had in college that had a bad stutter, and would make us shout out the word that he was stuck on. (I would always shout out the wrong word). But I would be wr-wr-wrong.

Back up on the horse

I've returned to WW as a member, not as a leader. Although all the receptionists and the territory manager keep asking when I'm going to come work for them. WHEN I TAKE OFF THIS 15 POUNDS. So back to the meetings, back to tracking, back to just trying to stick to it 70% of the time.

I've been going to the gym pretty steadily since AS shamed inspired me to start working out again. I'm following the Winning By Losing (Jillian Michaels natch) workout program to the letter - and while it's not nearly as difficult as her 30 day shred (which i was doing last spring), it's kicking my flabby fanny.

I know I need to get rid of the negative self talk, but I just don't look like *me* when I look in the mirror. It feels like such a set back - yes, I know I had a reason, I know it's only been a month, I know that I need to be kind to myself and just start where I am with no recriminations - but it's not easy. I sure am learning a lot about what my WW clients go through. This time around's been difficult for me, and i need to learn from it.

Speak of learning, I need to get off the TWOP Biggest Loser message boards and finish my presentation on the Biopsychosocial Integrative Model for my Intervention class tonight. I'm in the last three weeks for school (holy shit) and I've got a HELL of a lot of work to do, and here I am blogging about it instead of actually doing it.

By the way, I'm taking Intro to Behavioral Neuroscience next semester - it's supposed to be one of their toughest classes and I am just FREAKING OUT i'm so excited.

Question: What TV shows can you not live without? I have decided to eliminate all unnecessary tv viewing (yes, I know, it's ALL unnecessary). But it appears that the ones to make the cut for me are: Biggest Loser, 30 Rock, Rachel Maddow, and the Daily Show. 4 hours per week (although if you watch Biggest Loser by Tivo and ff through all the irrelevant bullshit they pack into it, you can watch it in an hour). So, three hours of TV per week. Oh, no, wait.Duh. Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart are on 4-5 days per weeks, sigh, so that's......8.5 hours of tv per week.

Yikes. That's a lot.

But that's also me eliminating: How I met your mother, Big Bang Theory, Life, Countdown with K.O., The office, My Name is Earl, and the occasional cooking or gardening show. No wonder my house is a mess and I haven't read a book in a century, and I'm behind on my school reading. Evil, bad tv!!

As I live and breathe....

Okay, someone looks appropriate in this shot, and someone looks RIFREAKINGDICULOUS. And not who I would have expected.

I can kick! And stretch! and kick!

All rachel all the time

Mocking, vindictive, hate-fueled ridicule.

See, there are the kind of folks like Auntie Sassy - who see the big picture, see the mess we're in and want to reach out a hand and work with others to make this country a better place. I call this the Obama crowd.

Then there are folk like me. Most of you know us as the Bill O'Reilly's of the world - just screechy and maladjusted and angry. There's not as many of us on the left as there are on the right, since we tend to be, you know, more empathetic, more reality based. But we're here. They just won't give us any tv shows.

But dammit, I want payback for the last eight years. I'm pissy and mad and stamping my little foot. Fuck those fuckers and bring Bush and Cheney up on charges of war crimes.

Can you fucking believe that there are already impeach Obama sites out there? I can. Because this right wing hate machine doesn't stop. It'll never stop. It will work each day to tear him down, to find his weakness, to make it impossible for him to govern. It will lie, cheat, steal and the cry to high holy heaven about the liberal media bias.

And there's nothing like it on the left. Not yet anyway. We come to the White House and we say, oh I want to be post partisan, I want to govern from the Center (and when I say I, I mean Obama because no one's elected me to do anything as far as I know). But not the right, instead they immediately start whining about Rahm Emanuel being Chief of Staff.

BTW, I fucking LOVE LOVE LOVE Rahm Emanuel. I've loved him since the clinton years. Bare knuckles, sharp elbows, whatever. He gets shit done - even if only incrementally at times - and he takes no prisoners. obama can talk about the Center and reaching across the aisle all he wants, the repubs are right - having RA as CoS is a very strong way to step out of the gate, and it's a very large sign on the front whitehouse lawn that says don't fuck with me.

I wish I were more like Sassy. But the last 8 years have filled me with so much bile (also a good indication that my liver began to shut down somewhere around '04), that I'm just not interested in being mature and kind. Think Obama and the gays and the blacks and the jews and the atheists are ruining your precious little white bread walmart inbred thicknecked country? Good. Move to fucking Texas. There's enough room for you all there and you can make it your own country again and leave us the hell alone.

Sigh I need so much therapy.

Great article on Rachel Maddow