What is not required for a psychological test?

The correct answer is Option (3) → It must be developed by some renowned personality

A psychological test is an objective and standardised measure of an individual’s mental and/or behavioural characteristics. What makes a test usable is how it has been built and checked, not who built it.

Option (1) It should be reliable — Required (Incorrect). A test must give consistent scores; its manual reports the reliability indices, which show how much error is possible in the scores.

Option (2) It must be valid — Required (Incorrect). A test must measure what it claims to measure; the manual reports the type of validation done and the external criteria of validation.

Option (3) It must be developed by some renowned personality — Not required (Correct). The fame of the person who made a test says nothing about how accurately it measures. A test by an unknown author is acceptable if it is reliable, valid and has norms, and a test by a famous psychologist is of no use without them.

Option (4) It must have norms — Required (Incorrect). Norms show the scores of the group with which a person’s score is compared (for example by sex or age group); without them a score cannot be interpreted.

Note: The list of what a test manual must report (validity, reliability, standardisation sample and norms) was there in the chapter ‘Developing Psychological Skills’ of the pre-rationalised NCERT, which NTA followed in 2023, and is not there in the NCERT book (2025-26), which only calls a psychological test an objective and standardised measure.