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Validity

Validity, a major criterion of test quality (see Testing), test suitability for measuring what it is intended to measure. Suitable for assessing intellect, a test may be no good for assessing temperament, etc. The concept of V. characterises not only testing, but also its purpose or application. Test V. implies the question: What for? The coefficient of test correlation with some criterion is the measure of V.

Value

Value, a concept accepted in philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and sociology, and characterising the socio-historical significance for society and the personalised meaning for individuals of certain realities. Marxist-Leninist philosophy sees the sources of axiological attitude in the social character of human activity. The whole variety of human object-oriented activity and social relations is the object of that attitude. The V. assessment criteria for different phenomena are of a concrete historical nature. V’s are an important factor in social regulation of individual behaviour and human interrelations (see Value Orientations; Value- Orientational Unity).

Value-Orientational Unity

Value-Orientational Unity, an indicator of group cohesion characterising intragroup relationships and reflecting the degree of coincidence of opinions, assessments, attitudes and positions of group members with regard to objects (goals, persons, ideas, events, etc.) most meaningful to the whole group. In a collective, V.-O.U. is primarily manifested in converging judgements and values in the moral and professional spheres, in its members’ approaches to various goals, tasks and values connected with their joint socially-useful activities. As an indicator of group cohesion, V.-O.U. in no way presupposes complete coincidence of the values and positions of all the group members, a coincidence that would level out all manifestations of individuality. No motley diversity of tastes, aesthetic appraisals, readers’ interests, likings in sports, personal sympathies, etc. in group members would prevent them from preserving their cohesion if they agree on basic issues (see Group Compatibility) .

Value Orientations (in social psychology)

Value Orientations (in social psychology), (1) ideological, political, moral, aesthetic and other foundations for personal assessment of and attitude to surrounding reality; (2) a way whereby an individual would differentiate objects by their significance (see Personalised Meaning). V.O. form in assimilating social experience (see Socialisation) and are seen in personal goals, ideals, convictions, interests, and other individual traits. Within the structure of human activity, V.O. are closely connected with its cognitive and volitional aspects. V.O. form the essence of personality orientation and express the inner foundation of individual attitudes to reality. Group V.O. develop in the course of joint activities which determine relations among group members. Group cohesion (as value- 325 orientational unity) is guaranteed when the principal V.O. of group members coincide.

Verbal

Verbal, a term used in psychology to designate forms of sign material, and also operations involving that material. Distinction should be made between comprehensible V. material (series of nouns, adjectives, verbs, numerals, fragments from prose or poetry, etc.) and meaningless V. material (groups of three consonants, syllables, or senseless words that vary in degree of proximation to real language). V. material is contrasted to non-verbal comprehensible material (geometrical figures, drawings, photographs, objects, etc.) and to non-verbal meaningless material (unusual geometrical figures, ink blots). Depending on the material used, distinction should be made between V. and non-verbal communication (for instance, by means of gestures); V. intellect (one determined by how a person solves V. problems) and nonverbal intellect (characterised by the ability to solve imaginal, constructive, and other non-verbal problems); and V. and non-verbal information (for instance, imaginal information).

Verstehende Psychologie

Verstehende Psychologie, a trend in German psychology in the late 19 thearly 20th centuries, which considered the main objective of psychological investigations to be not the causal explanation of man’s psychology but its understanding by correlating man’s meaningful emotional experiences with the world of cultural and historical values. The theory was advanced by the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, whose idea was based on opposing the natural to social sciences, and on denial of the very possibility to learn the socio-historical dependence of human mind by objective methods, including experimental, scientific techniques. Dilthey’s protest against experimental psychology as a science that allegedly ignored the most essential features of human consciousness was resolutely rejected by some of its advocates, e.g. by Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist who noted that the V.P. programme was reduced to intuitive comprehension of psyche, which has no objective foundation and, hence, falls inevitably out of the general context of scientific knowledge about man. Eduard Spranger, a German philosopher and Dilthey’s student, was the one to introduce the term "V.P.". He distinguished six types of human behaviour in various fields of culture, namely the ideal model of the theoretical, economic, aesthetic, social, political, and religious man (personality). Subsequently, this typology was used by the US psychologist Gordon Allport and others for their experimental studies of value orientations of personality. The phenomenological, descriptive approach suggested by Dilthey in contrast to the analytical approach influenced numerous idealistically-minded psychologists, including Felix Krueger and others. In their works, Marxist psychologists criticised V.P. from dialectico-materialistic positions for its strictly idealistic interpretation of the cultural and historical substance of human mind, and for rejecting the 326 possibility of objective and causal explanation of psychological phenomena.

Vocational Guidance (in socialist countries)

Vocational Guidance (in socialist countries), scientifically organised professional information intended chiefly for young people graduating from general education schools and designed to give them practical assistance in choosing a profession with account for their propensities, interests, and formed abilities, and also with consideration for the needs of society and the national economy. V.G. must essentially be based on available information on the role and prospects of every profession; the need for personnel; the nature of the work to be done; the socio- economic and sanitary-hygienic status of different professions; the system of professional training, on the one hand, and the requirements of a given profession, medical and physiological indications and counterindications to a given occupation, on the other. V.G. helps establish an optimal correlation between personal aspirations and possibilities and the actual national need for specialists with necessary skills and plays an important role in vocational self-determination. V.G. is most successful when it is conducted on age and educational levels and involves teachers and parents interested in choosing a profession for the young people concerned. V.G. being an element of vocational orientation, is conducted by psychologists and teachers that have the necessary knowledge, by medical people and sociologists. They have to work in close contact with the educational establishments and enterprises of their respective districts and be assisted by relevant leading research centres.

Vocational Orientation (in socialist countries)

Vocational Orientation (in socialist countries), a complex of psychological, pedagogical, and medical measures aimed at optimising specialised employment of young people in conformity with their desires, propensities, and formed abilities, on the one hand, and with account for the need of the national economy and society for specialists, on the other. The Constitution of the USSR provides for systematic V.O., which is an organic element of educational activities in institutions of learning, since the choice of a profession as a realised necessity of one’s participation in socially useful labour is an important condition for moulding a personality of the socialist type. Two forms of V.O. have become established: (1) narrow-based V.O., whereby an educational institution that trains specialists reveals to the trainees all the specifics of their forthcoming activity, indicate optimal methods for assimilating them to a given profession, etc. and (2) broad-based V.O. whereby young people who have not yet made their choice are acquainted with available professions. The recent reform of general education and vocational schools in the USSR was aimed to drastically improve V.O. in general education schools through intensified labour training and polytechnical and practice-oriented education based on transition to universal vocational schooling. To improve the level of labour training of the younger 327 generation, the reform envisaged the involvement of pupils, starting from junior forms, in organised socially useful labour compatible with their health and age. In shortened secondary schools, the pupils had to receive sound general labour training, and in secondary schools labour training in the most widespread professions with account for the needs of specific regions. The Guidelines for the Reform of General Education and Vocational Schools adopted by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet in 1984 stated that "correctly organised labour education, training and vocational orientation, and direct participation of schoolchildren in socially useful productive labour, are indispensable factors for developing conscientious attitudes towards studies; correct civic orientations, and a morally, intellectually, and physically wellformed personality.”

Voluntarism

Voluntarism, an idealist trend in psychology and philosophy that recognises the will as a special, supernatural force underlying psyche and being in general. According to V., volitional acts are totally undetermined, but they themselves determine the course of mental processes. The concept that the will enjoys priority in human life was developed during the collapse of the ancient world outlook, when people began to question the idea that thinking is the principal spiritual force. The religious thinker Augustine was one of the first to install the principle of will. He maintained that will governs the actions of the soul and body to prompt the soul to selfknowledge; it builds from bodily imprints of things their images; extracts ideas embedded in the soul; and so on. The German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward von Hartmann absolutised the will by declaring it a cosmic force, which is a source of all human psychic manifestations. Subsequently, under the influence of this variety of V., so-called depth psychology (see Psychoanalysis; Analytical Psychology) developed a view concerning the irrational nature of drives thai motivate human behaviour. The German philosopher and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt and the US philosopher and psychologist William James also favoured the concept of V. Wundt believed that mental causation supremely manifests itself in the volitional act, primarily in apperception, while James maintained that the decisive role in an act belongs to a totally unconditioned volitional decision [Fiafi (Lat.)—"Let it be done!"]. The German psychologist Hugo Miinsterberg, who defended the idea that the will dominates over all other mental functions, and other Western psychologists of the late 19th-early 20th century took the same view. V. falsely interprets man’s inherent ability to independently choose a goal and the ways for it, and also his ability to make decisions expressing his personal attitudes and beliefs as being caused by some special spiritual entity.