In this article, we revisit Aaron Cicourel's classic text "Method and Measurement in Sociology." We consider the legacy and influence of the book in the context of the continued and urgent significance of such properly methodological inquiry. We examine, in particular, the ways in which Cicourel's concern with decisions of measurement --…

Background: This paper extends a recent study by Kaplan and Su ("J Educ Behav Stat" 41: 51-80, 2016) examining the problem of matrix sampling of context questionnaire scales with respect to the generation of plausible values of cognitive outcomes in large-scale assessments. Methods: Following Weirich et al. ("Nested multiple…

Despite substantial attention to measurement and assessment in contemporary education and music education policy and practice, the process of measurement has gone largely undiscussed in music education philosophy. Using the work of physicist and philosopher Karen Barad, in this philosophical inquiry, I investigated the nature of measurement in…

Large-scale academic assessments have played a dominant role in U.S. federal and state education policies over the past couple of decades. Among the many validity issues that presently concern test users is the evaluation of alignment among large-scale assessments and the academic content and performance standards on which they are based. This…

Background: In order to measure the proficiency of person populations in various domains, large-scale assessments often use marginal maximum likelihood IRT models where person proficiency is modelled as a random variable. Thus, the model does not provide proficiency estimates for any single person. A popular approach to derive these proficiency…

In this commentary, we examine Braverman's insights into the trade-offs between feasibility and rigor in evaluation measures and reject his assessment of the trade-off as a zero-sum game. We, argue that feasibility and policy salience are, like reliability and validity, intrinsic to the definition of a good measure. To reduce the tension between…

We propose a new limited-information goodness of fit test statistic C[subscript 2] for ordinal IRT models. The construction of the new statistic lies formally between the M[subscript 2] statistic of Maydeu-Olivares and Joe (2006), which utilizes first and second order marginal probabilities, and the M*[subscript 2] statistic of Cai and Hansen…

The literature on bibliometric indices for assessing scholarly impact, in particular the "h" index (Hirsch, 2005) and its many variants, is extensive, but nevertheless Ruscio and colleagues (this issue) succeed in making a valuable contribution. They have made the effort of collecting publication and citation data for no less than 1,750…

Ruscio and colleagues (Ruscio, Seaman, D'Oriano, Stremlo, & Mahalchik, this issue) have done a great service by systematically comparing indices of scholarly impact. Three aspects of their work are particularly valuable: (1) Their assessment of the proliferating collection of metrics, whose development has become something of a cottage industry,…

In their article Ruscio et al. (Ruscio, Seaman, D'Oriano, Stremlo, & Mahalchik, this issue) present a comparative study of some of the different variants of the "h" index. The study evaluates a total of 22 metrics, including the "h" index and "h"-type indices, as well as other conventional measures. The novelty of their work is to a large extent…

This study assesses the psychometric properties of a newly tested self-report assessment tool for media literacy, based on the twelve new media literacy skills (NMLs) developed by Jenkins et al. (2006). The sample (N = 327) consisted of normal volunteers who completed a comprehensive online survey that measured their NML skills, media exposure,…

Humphry (this issue) deserves credit for drawing attention to the long-neglected fact that differences in item discrimination parameters are often due to empirical factors and not the product of random error components. In doing so, Humphry offers a psychometrically elegant, coherent, and practically important new model that is more flexible while…

Why do we continue to see evidence that nonprofit staff feel like outcome measurement is missing important aspects of their work? Based on an analysis of over 1,000 pages of material in 10 outcome measurement guides and a focused literature review of frontline work in three types of nonprofit organizations, this article shows that existing outcome…

Behavioral scientists have struggled with units of measurement for as long as they have struggled with measurement itself. Psychology's sole attempt at an explicit unit of measurement--the Lexile Framework for Reading (Stenner, Burdick, Sanford, & Burdick, 2006)--has been and continues to be ignored by the psychometric "cognoscenti."…

The proper use of psychological tests requires that the measurement instruments have adequate psychometric properties, such as reliability and validity, and that the professionals who use the instruments have the necessary expertise. In this article, we present the first review of tests published in Spain, carried out with an assessment model…