| Computer-based Case Simulations (CCS) is the world-class medical clinical simulation system. However, Computer-based Case Simulations for Psychological Counseling (CCSPC) is suited with psychological counseling settings, which aims at assessing the subjects'clinical ability of decision-making during the interaction progress between the subjects and the cases. CCSPC is developed in this study in order to measure the subjects'practical skills and decision-making styles during the psychological counseling progress, as well as the related knowledge of concepts, principles and methods, to get a whole assessment of the subjects'counseling skills. The design styles of performance assessment and objective testing are well united during the development of CCSPC.The method of behavioral event interview is used to investigate 28 psychological counselors, and competency model is constructed based on the different traits between the excellent and common groups. The interviewees are rather representative, and their units contain universities, primary and secondary schools, and social organizations. The various competency models during different professional stages are also discussed, on behalf of the development of CCSPC for the subjects at the practicum stage, and the content and predictive validity.With the help of the developers of medical CCS, the scripts of psychological counseling cases are written by one skilled counseling professor and one skilled counseling associate professor. A case with compulsive neurosis is chosen as the script for computer program. C#2003 is used to realize the visualized interfaces, and SQL2005 is in charge of the database. But the interfaces and the database are separately installed in different computers. The subjects interact with the case through four modules, i.e. the beginning of counseling, psychological testing, diagnoses and differential diagnoses, counseling plan and practice. Large size sample check proves the stability, security and accessibility of CCSPC. The percent of stability is 97.34%.978 subjects take part in the exam of CCSPC.930 are valid, including psychological undergraduates and graduates, and the applicants for the certificate of psychological counselor. The data is analyzed by the methods of both Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT). Item analysis, internal consistency and construct validity are computed under CTT, while the item and test information are computed under IRT. The Bifactor analysis also explores the evidence of construct validity. The evidence of predictive validity and demographic differences are analyzed by the two scoring methods, i.e. CTT and IRT. The models of IRT excel CTT at the control of item and test measurement error. As expected, the results obtained by the two scoring methods are rather consistent.In summary, the results of this thesis indicate:(1) Psychological counselors'competency model is built through the method of behavioral event interview. Two coders develop the themes and codes; afterwards, another two-coder group repeats the process. The coding consistency, reliability, and Kendall's concordance coefficient are acceptable. Based on the different traits between the excellent and common groups, the competency model is constructed. It contains 9 traits, such as principle of secrecy, insight and sensitivity, sense of opportunity, the relationship of trust, attentive listen, familiarity with diagnosis standards, familiarity with theoretical schools and technology, collection of information and specialty observation, and principle of support.(2) CCSPC is developed on the basis of psychological counselors'competency model, and the items can cover the 9 traits quite well, which strengthen the connection between the simulated case and practical skills. On the other hand, CCSPC development uses the style of performance assessment, which simulates the counseling settings in the real world. The four modules, the beginning of counseling, psychological testing, diagnoses and differential diagnoses, counseling plan and practice, place emphasis on the characteristics of scene and process. CCSPC uses mixed item types, and unite the styles of performance assessment and objective test. CCSPC reduces the complexity in the dialog section and the disorder transformation, and give prominence to the interactions between the sections of psychological testing and diagnoses/differential diagnoses, in order to simplify the paths.(3) The analyses by CTT show the distribution of difficulty is acceptable. Based on the item analysis of fixed items, CCSPC gets good internal consistency. IRT analyses use information as index to choose items, which integrate the difficulty, discrimination, and guessing parameters. The test information of CCSPC is considerably high. The results from CTT and Bifactor show that the structure of CCSPC data can prove the competency model to some extent. The two scoring methods (CTT & MIRT) both get good evidence of predictive validity, which mean CCSPC connect with the exam for counseling certification to some extent. However, they may have different content construct. The two scoring methods (CTT & MIRT) show that:the higher the grade and degree are, and the higher scores subjects get, which provides the developmental evidence of validity. The means of all indicators of female group are significantly higher than those of male group. The means of certain indicators of the applied psychology group have no significant differences compared with the psychology group, while the means of most indicators of the above two groups are significantly higher than the fundamental psychology group. Subjects who get the counseling certificate or the related training score significantly higher than those who don't. Based on the results of this study and the past studies, IRT has the advantage of CTT as far as invariability of item and ability parameters, the precision of overall score, equating, and computerized adaptive test are concerned. Thus, IRT is more suitable for the data analysis of CCSPC.
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