In this perspective, the authors critically examine "rater training" as it has been conceptualized and used in medical education. By "rater training," they mean the educational events intended to "improve" rater performance and contributions during assessment events. Historically, rater training programs have focused…

Agent-based models (ABMs) often rely on psychometric constructs such as 'opinions', 'stubbornness', 'happiness', etc. The measurement process for these constructs is quite different from the one used in physics as there is no standardized unit of measurement for opinion or happiness. Consequently, measurements are usually affected by 'psychometric…

The recent surge in the popularity of Large Language Models (LLM) for language assessment underscores the growing significance of cost-effective language evaluation in our increasingly digitalized society. This paper posits that the application of computational psychometrics can enable the incorporation of technology into language assessment,…

To facilitate the chemistry education community in locating and evaluating published assessment instruments, the Chemistry Instrument Review and Assessment Library (CHIRAL) encompasses a number of resources. First and foremost, CHIRAL contains a catalog of over 500 assessment instruments that is easily searchable, allowing for the identification…

Scholars have lamented that current methods of assessing student performance do not align with contemporary views of learning as situated within students, contexts, and time. Here, we introduce and describe one theoretical--psychometric paradigm--termed "dynamic measurement"--designed to provide a valid representation of the way students…

High quality student outcome measures provide the foundation for effective learning assessment. These outcomes can be organized into different categories, such as skills or habits of mind, and evidence types, such as direct or indirect. Prevailing models of assessment, however, focus only on the distinction between direct and indirect evidence…

Equating of psychometric scales and tests is frequently required and conducted in educational, behavioral, and clinical research. Construct comparability or equivalence between measuring instruments is a necessary condition for making decisions about linking and equating resulting scores. This article is concerned with a widely applicable method…

Practitioners in health sciences education and assessment regularly use a range of psychometric techniques to analyse data, evaluate models, and make crucial progression decisions regarding student learning. However, a recent editorial entitled "Is Psychometrics Science?" highlighted some core epistemological and practical problems in…

This commentary will take an historical perspective on the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA) error analysis, discussing where it started, where it is today, and where it may be headed in the future. In addition, the commentary will compare and contrast the KTEA error analysis procedures that are rooted in psychometric methodology and…

ACT requested assistance from the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (Center for Assessment) to investigate declines of scores for states administering the ACT to its 11th grade students in 2018. This request emerged from conversations among state leaders, the Center for Assessment, and ACT in trying to understand the…

The measurement error in principal components extracted from a set of fallible measures is discussed and evaluated. It is shown that as long as one or more measures in a given set of observed variables contains error of measurement, so also does any principal component obtained from the set. The error variance in any principal component is shown…

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…

Institutions of higher education face an increasing demand for evidence that they are providing the high-quality educational experience promised in promotional materials. Accrediting bodies require assessment for accountability to ensure continuous improvement. Faculty at Christian higher education institutions join their secular counterparts in…

This issue's featured article, "Assessment and Learning: Fields Apart" (Baird, Andrich, Hopfenbeck, and Stobart 2017) raises issues that are of basic importance for the disciplines of assessment and teaching and learning theory. In this commentary, Alex Scharaschkin restricts his remarks to a few areas. He considers the idea of a…

Dynamic measurement modeling (DMM) has been shown to improve the consequential validity of longitudinal mathematics assessment in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten (ECLS-K) database. Here, the authors demonstrate the capability of DMM to similarly improve the consequential validity of ECLS-K reading assessment through the…