The Personal Development Test Provides Indices of Honesty, Giftedness, and Personal Development
The Personal Development Test is designed to identify the "at-risk" high school and college freshmen student for dropping out of school. In repeated tests the PDT scores were able to discern between high school and college drop-out students and corresponding typical individuals. In addition, it provides a meaningful index of honesty, and serves to identify the gifted individuals. This is done through the use of 21 Pairs of items from the test scored separately as a Confluence core. Half of those items are opposites, and the other half are at odds to each other in varying degrees; so if an individual scores one of the pairs one way, and fails to score the second item in the pair the opposite, the scores are at odds to fact. ********** The Personal Development Test (PDT) (Cassel, & Chow, 2002) is designed and validated for use with adolescent youth, and this includes high school students and freshmen in college. Because female students tend to score significantly higher than male students on personal development during adolescent years, and because personal development is correlated positively with maturity, male norms must be used with male student, female norms for female students, high school norms for high school students, and college norms for college students. By comparing typical students with scores for prison inmates, who represent high school and college drop-out students, it provides a meaningful index of "at-risk" students for drop-out prediction purposes. Data from the PDT test provides school administrators with the following meaningful indices: 1. Possible Non-literate in english language. 2. Honesty, and degree of honesty; possibility of lack of English literacy. 3. Gifted and Superior Intelligence. 4. Depicting "at-risk" students for dropout prediction purposes. Based on DSM-IV Research The DSM-IV is the culmination of almost a decade of research by the American Psychiatric Association involving more than 1,000 people to identify critical factors underlying the health and welfare of people. It is one of the great studies of all times in helping better understand psychological dynamics underling human behavior. In this study the Global Functioning Assessment Scale proved to be one of five indices underling the health and welfare of all individuals. The PDT is designed to provide a meaningful understanding of such global functioning by individuals as a meaningful index of their personal development (DSM-IV, 1994). Adapted to a Democracy The PDT structure is based largely on the words and description of John Dewey (1938) in relation to democracy. He insisted that a democracy is "The interdependence of independent individuals." The two main parts of the PDT are based largely on Dewey's description of a democracy. The Personal Maturity portion has four different parts that seek to cover the "independence" aspects of a democracy: (1) Self efficacy, (2) Coping Skills, (3) Positive Assertiveness, and (4) Locus of Control-Decision Making. The Social Integration portion covers the "interdependence" element of the Dewey definition, and has four part scores: (5) Team Member, (6) Sympathy, (7) Self-esteem, and (8) Caring Main Part of PDT There are 200 true/false items in the PDT test with the primary focus of assessing the Personal Development using the 8 part scores described for the test. The main function of the test is to identify the "at-risk" adolescent individuals for dropping out of high school and later as freshmen in college. The two million prison inmates in our country are comprised of one million high school drop-out students, and the other million are largely college dropout students. Comparisons in repeated studies with the PDT show that prison inmates lack personal development in comparison to typical high school and college freshmen (Cassel, R.N. Education, 2003, pending). A comparison of prison inmate scores with typical individuals provide the basis for identifying the "at-risk" student from dropping out of high school or as freshmen in college. …