Psychologists in the context of Explanation

Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally covers specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and related activities. Psychometrics is concerned with the objective measurement of latent constructs that cannot be directly observed. Examples of latent constructs include intelligence, personality factors (e.g., introversion), mental disorders, and educational achievement. The levels of individuals on nonobservable latent variables are inferred through mathematical modeling based on what is observed from individuals' responses to items on tests and scales.

Practitioners are described as psychometricians, although not all who engage in psychometric research go by this title. Most psychometricians are psychologists with advanced graduate training in psychometrics and measurement theory. According to the Dictionary of Psychology a psychometrician "is an individual with a theoretical knowledge of measurement techniques who is qualified to develop, evaluate, and improve psychological tests." In addition to traditional academic institutions, psychometricians also work for organizations, such as Pearson and the Educational Testing Service as well as independent consultants. Some psychometric researchers focus on the construction and validation of assessment instruments, including surveys, scales, and open- or close-ended questionnaires. Others focus on research relating to measurement theory (e.g., item response theory, intraclass correlation) or specialize as learning and development professionals.

In psychology, mental time travel is the capacity to mentally reconstruct personal events from the past (episodic memory) as well as to imagine possible scenarios in the future (episodic foresight/episodic future thinking). The term was coined by Thomas Suddendorf and Michael Corballis, building on Endel Tulving's work on episodic memory. (Tulving proposed the alternative term chronesthesia.)

Mental time travel has been studied by psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, philosophers and in a variety of other academic disciplines. Major areas of interest include the nature of the relationship between memory and foresight, the evolution of the ability (including whether it is uniquely human or shared with other animals), its development in young children, its underlying brain mechanisms, as well as its potential links to consciousness, the self, and free will.

In research of human subjects, a survey is a list of questions aimed for extracting specific data from a particular group of people. Surveys may be conducted by phone, mail, via the internet, and also in person in public spaces. Surveys are used to gather or gain knowledge in fields such as social research and demography.

Survey research is often used to assess thoughts, opinions and feelings. Surveys can be specific and limited, or they can have more global, widespread goals. Psychologists and sociologists often use surveys to analyze behavior, while it is also used to meet the more pragmatic needs of the media, such as, in evaluating political candidates, public health officials, professional organizations, and advertising and marketing directors. Survey research has also been employed in various medical and surgical fields to gather information about healthcare personnel's practice patterns and professional attitudes toward various clinical problems and diseases. Healthcare professionals that may be enrolled in survey studies include physicians, nurses, and physical therapists among others. A survey consists of a predetermined set of questions that is given to a sample. With a representative sample, that is, one that is representative of the larger population of interest, one can describe the attitudes of the population from which the sample was drawn. Further, one can compare the attitudes of different populations as well as look for changes in attitudes over time. A good sample selection is key as it allows one to generalize the findings from the sample to the population, which is the whole purpose of survey research. In addition to this, it is important to ensure that survey questions are not biased such as using suggestive words. This prevents inaccurate results in a survey.

Islamic psychology or ʿilm al-nafs (Arabic: علم النفس), the science of the nafs ("self" or "psyche"), is the medical and philosophical study of the psyche from an Islamic perspective and addresses topics in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and psychiatry as well as psychosomatic medicine. In Islam, mental health and mental illness were viewed with a holistic approach. This approach emphasized the mutual connection between maintaining adequate mental wellbeing and good physical health in an individual. People who practice Islam thought it was necessary to maintain positive mental health in order to partake in prayer and other religious obligations.

Concepts from Islamic thought have been reexamined by Muslim psychologists and scholars in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The psychological schools are the great classical theories of psychology. Each has been highly influential; however, most psychologists hold eclectic viewpoints that combine aspects of each school.

Psychiatric rehabilitation, also known as psychosocial rehabilitation, and sometimes simplified to psych rehab by providers, is the process of restoration of community functioning and well-being of an individual diagnosed in mental health or emotional disorder and who may be considered to have a psychiatric disability.

Society affects the psychology of an individual by setting a number of rules, expectations and laws. Psychiatric rehabilitation work is undertaken by rehabilitation counselors (especially the individuals educated in psychiatric rehabilitation), licensed professional counselors (who work in the mental health field), psych rehab consultants or specialists (in private businesses), university level Masters and PhD levels, classes of related disciplines in mental health (psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, occupational therapists) and community support or allied health workers represented in the new direct support professional workforce in the United States (e.g., psychiatric aides).

Values scales are psychological inventories used to determine the values that people endorse in their lives. They facilitate the understanding of both work and general values that individuals uphold. In addition, they assess the importance of each value in people's lives and how the individual strives toward fulfillment through work and other life roles, such as parenting. Most scales have been normalized and can therefore be used cross-culturally for vocational, marketing, and counseling purposes, yielding unbiased results. Psychologists, political scientists, economists, and others interested in defining values, use values scales to determine what people value, and to evaluate the ultimate function or purpose of values.