Makes a case that the architects of national testing posited a measuring scale in which consecutive levels were separated by 2 years of learning under the influence of the "thought disorder" described by J. Michell, who claimed that psychological measurement may be little more than numerical coding. (SLD)

Reviews literature on (1) cultural validity of career assessment instruments with racial and ethnic minorities; (2) extent to which culture-specific variables influence career assessment; and (3) construction and validation of culture-specific measures. Finds more research on cultural validity than specificity and notes the need for more study of…

Describes the lessons learned in the creation of a special assessment instrument, a large-scale survey of the language and literacy skills of linguistic minorities in England and Wales, findings of which were reported elsewhere. The test construction process was found to be highly empirical and inductive, based on trial and error rather than…

Describes the development and validation of a self-report instrument for measuring resiliency in youth for recreation and other social services, noting that the instrument is not yet ready for use under all conditions and that while use of structural equation modeling removes some subjectivity, results of this type of analysis are still left to…

This discussion focuses on the role of textbooks in test washback, using the case of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to examine prevalent practices in test preparation and the materials used in such preparation. (Author/VWL)

Attempted to improve the measurement quality of a complex performance assessment through principled assessment design using the example of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Early Childhood/Generalist examination. All indexes examined improved after revisions were made. Results show the importance of attention to assessment…

The aims of this study were to evaluate components of a new tool, the Assessment of Sexual Knowledge (ASK), and to use it to assess the sexual knowledge of adults with intellectual disability. The ASK consists of a Knowledge Section, an Attitudes Section, a Quick Knowledge Quiz and a Problematic Socio-Sexual Behaviours Checklist. A sample of 96…

Now that many credentialing exams are being routinely administered by computer, new computer-based test designs, along with item response theory models, are being aggressively researched to identify specific designs that can increase the decision consistency and accuracy of pass-fail decisions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the…

The Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5) is a five-factor personality trait model designed for assessing personality pathology using quantitative dimensions. Harkness, McNulty, and Ben-Porath developed Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) scales based on the PSY-5 model, and these scales were recently added to the standard…

The Rasch testlet model for both dichotomous and polytomous items in testlet-based tests is proposed. It can be viewed as a special case of the multidimensional random coefficients multinomial logit model (MRCMLM). Therefore, the estimation procedures for the MRCMLM can be directly applied. Simulations were conducted to examine parameter recovery…

Several techniques exist to automatically put together a test meeting a number of specifications. In an item bank, the items are stored with their characteristics. A test is constructed by selecting a set of items that fulfills the specifications set by the test assembler. Test assembly problems are often formulated in terms of a model consisting…

The Spanish and English Neuropsychological Assessment Scales were devised to be a broad set of psychometrically matched measures with equivalent Spanish and English versions. Study 1 in this report used item response theory methods to refine scales. Results strongly supported psychometric matching across English and Spanish versions and, for most…

Acquiescence, or acquiescent responding, is reviewed. A detection method using the concept of differential person functioning is illustrated with two data sets. The effects of acquiescence are shown to be different for each example. Implications for questionnaire and attitudinal scale development are discussed and an operational definition for…

It is shown that in the context of the Model with Internal Restrictions on the Item Difficulties (MIRID), different componential theories about an item set may lead to equivalent models. Furthermore, we provide conditions for the identifiability of the MIRID model parameters, and it will be shown how the MIRID model relates to the Linear Logistic…

This paper describes a new instrument for evaluating the experience of the stuttering disorder from the perspective of individuals who stutter. Based on the World Health Organization's "International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health" [World Health Organization (2001). "The International Classification of Functioning,…