The return on research investment resulting from new breakthrough scientific discoveries may be decreasing over time due to the law of diminishing returns, the relative decrease of research funding in terms of purchasing power parity, and various activities gaming the system. By altering the grant-review process, the scientific community may…

Maul's paper, "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation" (Andrew Maul), contains two stages. First he presents empirical results that cast doubt on traditional methods for validating psychological measurement instruments. These results motivate the second stage, a critique of current conceptions of psychological measurement…

In this commentary on "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation," found in this issue of "Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives," William Fisher writes that Maul's paper raises issues of validity in survey-based measurement that deserve far wider consideration and scrutiny than they typically…

Author Randall Langston feels that mentoring should never be viewed as a chore but rather a dynamic and transformational opportunity to impact a student's life. Often, the legacy that some people leave is the professional relationships they have forged with others. In fact, it's not unusual to hear keynote and other conference presentations in…

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…

In this response to "Measuring Students' Writing Ability on a Computer Analytic Developmental Scale: An Exploratory Validity Study," the authors agree that assessments should seek parsimony in both theory and application wherever possible. Doing so allows maximal dissemination and implementation while minimizing costs. The Writing…

This rejoinder provides a reply to comments on a middle school college readiness index, which was devised to generate earlier and more nuanced readiness diagnoses to K-12 students. Issues of reliability and validity (including construct underrepresentation and construct-irrelevant variance) are discussed in detail. In addition, comments from…

The main points of Sijtsma and Green and Yang in Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice (34, 4) are that reliability, internal consistency, and unidimensionality are distinct and that Cronbach's alpha may be problematic. Neither of these assertions are at odds with Davenport, Davison, Liou, and Love in the same issue. However, many authors…

In our commentary on this excellent set of articles on "Sourcing in the Reading Process," we endeavor to synthesize the findings from the seven articles and discuss future research. We discuss significant contributions related to source memory, source evaluation, use of sources in action and belief, integration of information from…

In this webinar, Dr. Ronald Ferguson, creator of the Tripod Project and Senior Lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, discussed the use of student surveys as an approach to measuring teacher effectiveness. This Q&A addressed the questions participants had for Dr. Ferguson following the webinar. The webinar recording and…

Research into executive functioning (EF) has indeed grown exponentially across the past few decades, but as the Willoughby et al. critique makes clear, there remain fundamental questions to be resolved. The crux of their argument is built upon an examination of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) approach to understanding executive processes.…

The focus article (Willoughby et al., 2014) (1) introduced the distinction between formative and reflective measurement and (2) proposed that performance-based executive function tasks may be better conceptualized from the perspective of formative rather than reflective measurement. This proposal stands in sharp contrast to conventional…

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…

In this webinar, Dr. Drew Gitomer, professor at Rutgers University, shared results from recent studies of classroom observations that helped participants understand both general findings about the qualities of classroom interactions and also the challenges to carrying out valid and reliable observations. This Q&A addressed the questions…

Coefficient alpha is almost universally applied to assess reliability of scales in psychology. We argue that researchers should consider alternatives to coefficient alpha. Our preference is for structural equation modeling (SEM) estimates of reliability because they are informative and allow for an empirical evaluation of the assumptions…