Clinical cognitive ability assessment--and its corollary, score interpretation--are in a state of disarray. Many current instruments are designed to provide a bevy of scores to appeal to a variety of school psychologists. These scores are not all grounded in the attribute's theory or developed from sound measurement or psychometric theory. Thus,…

Purpose: Children with (central) auditory processing disorder [(C)APD] exhibit many cognitive difficulties and receive negative psychosocial consequences from their disorder. Diagnosis of (C)APD relies on multidisciplinary assessment, including psychological testing. There is a strong need for valid and reliable questionnaires to identify children…

The semantics, or meaning, of validity is a fluid concept in educational and psychological testing. Contemporary controversies surrounding this concept appear to stem from the proper location of validity. Under one view, validity is a property of score-based inferences and entailed uses of test scores. This view is challenged by the…

Studies of psychological misconceptions have often used tests with methodological shortcomings, unknown psychometric properties, and ad hoc methods for identifying misconceptions, creating problems for estimating frequencies of specific misconceptions. To address these problems, we developed a new test, the Test of Psychological Knowledge and…

Although problem-based learning (PBL) has been widely used in medical schools, few studies have attended to the assessment of PBL processes using validated instruments. This study examined reliability and validity for an instrument assessing PBL performance in four domains: Problem Solving, Use of Information, Group Process, and Professionalism.…

The purpose of this ITEMS module is to provide an introduction to subscores. First, examples of subscores from an operational test are provided. Then, a review of methods that can be used to examine if subscores have adequate psychometric quality is provided. It is demonstrated, using results from operational and simulated data, that subscores…

Recently, student outcomes have bubbled to the top of debates about how to evaluate teaching in community and liberal arts colleges, universities, and professional schools, but even more international attention has been riveted on how outcomes are being used to evaluate teachers and administrators K-12 (Harris, 2012; Rowen & Raudenbush, 2016;…

The Stirling Children's Well-being Scale (SCWBS) was developed by the Stirling Council Educational Psychology Service (UK) as a holistic, positively worded measure of emotional and psychological well-being in children aged eight to 15 years. Drawing on current theories of well-being and Positive Psychology, the aim was to provide a means of…

Just as objectivist theories have provided foundations for traditional tests, constructivist theories can offer foundations for performance assessment design and development methods. The tenets and principles embedded in various learning theories provide a solid foundation that can be combined with psychometric principles to help assessment…

The psychometric properties of the Adult Manifest Anxiety Scale-Elderly Version (AMAS-E) scores were evaluated in two studies. In Study 1, the temporal stability and construct validity of the AMAS-E test scores were examined in a group of 226 older adults, aged 60 years and older. Results indicated adequate to excellent temporal stability (2-week…

Accommodations to standard test administrations are granted on many tests for students who have one or more disabling conditions. In some instances, students' scores from these nonstandard administrations are "flagged" to caution those who interpret the test score that the test was not administered under typical conditions. The practice of…

The specificity doctrine, holds that psychometric tests measure nothing other than the specific bits of knowledge and learned skills reflected in the item content of the tests. This prevailing doctrine has influenced the interpretation of test scores and the conceptualization of test validity, as well as the practical use of tests in educational…

The factor structure of scores on the Adult Manifest Anxiety Scale-College Version (AMAS-C), a new self-report measure of chronic, manifest anxiety, is examined across gender for a sample of 943 college students (608 women and 335 men). Values for the coefficient of congruence and salient variable similarity index are calculated between each of…

People can use a variety of different strategies to perform tasks and these strategies all have two characteristics in common. First, they can be evaluated in comparison with either an absolute or a relative standard. Second, they can be used at varying levels of consistency. In the present article, the authors develop a general theory of task…

Purpose: We examine the psychometric properties of the Philadelphia Geriatric Morale Scale (PGMS) in an elderly Chinese population in Hong Kong. Design and Methods: The study consisted of two cohorts: (a) 759 participants aged 70 years and older living in the community who were recruited as part of a territory-wide health survey and interviewed in…