Despite the rising popularity of big data, there is speculation that evaluators have been slow adopters of these new statistical approaches. Several possible reasons have been offered for why this is the case: ethical concerns, institutional capacity, and evaluator capacity and values. In this method note, we address one of these barriers and aim…

Premised on the idea that evaluators should be familiar with a range of approaches to program modifications, I review several existing approaches and then describe another, less well-recognized option. In this newer option, evaluators work with others to identify potentially needed adaptations for select program aspects "in advance." In…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on assessing individuals' problems in learning groups/teams and should lead to the assessment of the group/team itself as a learning entity. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, an extension of the IMS-Learning Design (IMS-LD) meta-model is proposed in order to support the assessment of…

Modelling-based teaching activities have been designed and analysed from distinct theoretical perspectives. In this paper, we use one of them--the model of modelling diagram (MMD)--as an analytical tool in a regular classroom context. This paper examines the challenges that arise when the MMD is used as an analytical tool to characterise the…

Many quality assurance systems rely on high-stakes assessment for course certification. Such methods are not as objective as they might appear; they can have detrimental effects on student motivation and may lack relevance to the needs of degree courses increasingly oriented to vocational utility. "Alternative assessment" methods can…

In the United States, but not only here, the movement to evaluate teachers based on student test scores has received powerful political and parental support. The logic is simple. From one testing occasion to another students should show growth in their knowledge and skill. Similar types of students should show similar patterns of growth. Those…

This article explores a number of key issues with regard to the measurement of creativity in the course of conducting psychological research or when applying various evaluation measures. It is argued that, although creativity is a fuzzy concept, it is no more difficult to investigate than other fuzzy concepts people tend to take for granted. At…

This commentary examines the role of the unit from the perspective of the definition of measurement in physics as the ratio of two magnitudes, one of which is defined as the unit; it is an important and timely contribution to measurement in the social sciences. There are many different points that could be commented upon, but the author will…

Compared to traditional test theory, where person measures are typically referenced to the distribution of a population, item response theory allows for a much more meaningful interpretation of measures as they can be directly compared to item locations. However, Stephen Humphry shows that the crucial role of the unit of measurement has been…

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…

Humphry (this issue) has written a thought-provoking piece on the interpretation of item discrimination parameters as scale units in item response theory. One of the key features of his work is the description of an item response theory (IRT) model that he calls the logistic measurement function that combines aspects of two traditions in IRT that…

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 purpose of this article is to examine the role of the unit in physics in order to clarify the role of the unit in psychometrics. Based on this examination, metrological conventions are used to formulate the relationship between discrimination and the unit of a scale in item response theory. Seminal literature in two lines of item response…

This article presents Stephen Humphry's response to the commentaries for his article "The Role of the Unit in Physics and Psychometrics." The commentaries covered a range of important considerations and implications. Given that the author fully agrees with the majority of the content, attention will be confined mainly to points that call…

Value-added models have become popular fixes for various accountability schemes aimed at measuring teacher effectiveness. Value-added models may resolve some of the issues in accountability models, but they bring their own set of challenges to the table. Unfortunately, political and emotional considerations sometimes keep one from examining…