In this article, I respond to Noel Card's "Methodological Issues in Measuring the Development of Character." I focus on the ways in which social scientific knowledge represents human constructions of the world and the implications of this stance for the measurement of character. Further, I consider how context influences those…

The challenge of "educational" assessments--assessments that advance the purposes of learning and instruction--is to provide useful information regarding students' progress towards the goals of instruction in ways that are reliable and not idiosyncratic. In this commentary, the author indicates that the challenges are actually more…

In response to an argument by Baird, Andrich, Hopfenbeck and Stobart (2017), Michael Kane states that there needs to be a better fit between educational assessment and learning theory. In line with this goal, Kane will examine how psychometric constraints might be loosened by relaxing some psychometric "rules" in some assessment…

Koretz, in his article published in this issue, provides compelling arguments that the high stakes currently associated with accountability testing lead to behavioral changes in students, teachers, and other stakeholders that often have negative consequences, such as inflated scores. Koretz goes on to argue that these negative consequences require…

Assessments used for both clinical practice and research should show evidence of validity and reliability for the target group of people. It is easy to agree with this statement, but it is not always easy to choose the right assessment for the right purpose. Recently there have been increasing numbers of studies which investigate further the…

This article presents the author's observations on Neil Dorans's NCME Career Award Address: "The Contestant Perspective on Taking Tests: Emanations from the Statue within." He calls attention to some points that Dr. Dorans made in his address, and offers his thoughts in response.

In this speech, the author covers a lot of ground. In the first half of his speech, the author gives a brief summary of the last 40 years of the history of language testing, from his perspective. The author reviews these years more or less by decade. Additionally, he discusses the evolution of the profession of language testing during this period,…

Mackintosh and Bennett [Mackintosh, N. J., Bennett, E. S. (2005). What do Raven's Matrices measure? An analysis in terms of sex differences. "Intelligence, 33," 663-674] reported that male students obtained higher scores than females on Raven's items that required for their solution addition/subtraction or distribution of two rules, but…

In this commentary, the authors discuss some of the issues regarding the use of diagnostic classification models that practitioners should keep in mind. In the authors experience, these issues are not as well known as they should be. The authors then provide recommendations on diagnostic scoring.

Need for closure, as formulated by Kruglanski and colleagues [Kruglanski, A. W. (1990). Lay epistemic theory in social-cognitive psychology. "Psychological Inquiry," 1(3), 181-197; Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: Seizing and freezing. "Psychological Review," 103, 263-283; Webster,…

This special series focused on treatment integrity in the child mental health and education field is timely. The articles do a laudable job of reviewing (a) the current status of treatment integrity research and measurement, (b) existing conceptual models of treatment integrity, and (c) the limitations of prior research. Overall, this thoughtful…

The product of mental health counseling, unlike that of most professions, remains invisible to most people, leaving counselors vulnerable in a competitive market. The author argues that clinicians should recognize the value of, understand, and begin using outcome measures in their work. Research focusing on critical problems in psychotherapy…

The authors are pleased with commentators' willingness to respond to their target article's challenge to identify observable reproducible phenomena that could be widely accepted as strong scientific evidence for innate talent. In this reply, the authors have organized the ideas in the commentaries into three general categories, namely the…

The program evaluation standards approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1994 that deal with reliability and validity accurately represent contemporary views of the psychometric community with regard to reliability and validity. As such, these standards move the field forward. The ANSI standards recognize that reliability…

Issues arising from difference scores with zero reliability that nevertheless allow a powerful test of change are discussed. Issues include the appropriateness of underlying statistical models for psychological data and the relationship between difference scores and power. Increases in reliability always increase power for a fixed effect size.…