ABSTRACT
Computer applications in psychology grew remarkably during the last half of the 20th century (Bartram & Hambleton, 2006). Initially used primarily for scoring test items on academic and achievement tests, computers have increasingly been used for more complex processes in ways that not only are more reliable than similar tasks done by humans, but also more cost-effective. As summarized by Butcher (2009):
In the 1960s, practitioners began to capitalize on computers’ capabilities to assist with data interpretation as well. Optical scanners that “read” answer sheets and tabulated responses were connected with programs written to analyze the scores and report the results in a clinically meaningful way (Fowler, 1967). Today, scoring is made even easier through the use of online testing which can provide for the nearly instant computerized tabulation of results (Baker, 2007).
