Economists often use test scores to measure a student's performance or an adult's human capital. These scores reflect non-trivial decisions about how to measure and scale student achievement, with important implications for secondary analyses. For example, the scores computed in several major testing regimes, including the National Assessment of…

Standard setting is a fairly widespread activity in educational and psychological measurement, but there is no formal psychometric theory to guide the development of standard setting methodology. This paper presents a conceptual framework for such a psychometric theory and uses the conceptual framework to analyze a number of methods for setting…

A conceptual framework and heuristic model for considering the existence, magnitude, and consequences of context effects are presented through an extension of some generalizability theory concepts. Context effects are often misunderstood, and current measurement models have serious limitations for examining them. Their importance needs to be…

Some unresolved methodological and philosophical issues in the assessment of performance trends are discussed as they relate to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). How to measure performance change while remaining responsive to advances in curriculum and the technology of assessment is a central dilemma. (SLD)

Data from 10,000 17-year-old respondents to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1975-76 Special Mathematics Probe (Basic Mathematics Assessment) were analyzed. The primary purpose was to identify respondents' background characteristics associated with basic mathematics achievement. The achievement items and 241 background…

The 63 items on skills in acquiring and using information from written documents contained in the Survey of Young Adult Literacy in the 1985 National Assessment of Educational Progress are analyzed. The analyses are based on a qualitative cognitive model and an item-response theory model. (TJH)