With the advent of big data and advances in technology, psychological assessments have become increasingly sophisticated and complex. Nevertheless, traditional psychometric issues concerning the validity, reliability, and measurement bias of such assessments remain fundamental in determining whether score inferences of human attributes are…

About 45 R packages to analyze data using item response theory (IRT) have been developed over the last decade. This article introduces these 45 R packages with their descriptions and features. It also describes possible advanced IRT models using R packages, as well as dichotomous and polytomous IRT models, and R packages that contain applications…

This article introduces practitioners and researchers to the topic of missing data in the context of differential item functioning (DIF), reviews the current literature on the issue, discusses implications of the review, and offers suggestions for future research. A total of nine studies were reviewed. All of these studies determined what effect…

Purpose: This policy brief discusses validity and fairness issues that could arise when test-based information is used for making "high stakes" decisions at an individual level, such as, for the certification of teachers or other professionals, or when admitting students into higher education programs and colleges, or for making…

Although definitions of validity have evolved considerably since L. J. Cronbach and P. E. Meehl's classic (1955) review, contemporary validity research continues to emphasize correlational analyses assessing predictor-criterion relationships, with most outcome criteria being self-reports. The present article describes an alternative way of…

In this essay, the author tries to look forward into the 21st century to divine three things: (i) What skills will researchers in the future need to solve the most pressing problems? (ii) What are some of the most likely candidates to be those problems? and (iii) What are some current areas of research that seem mined out and should not distract…

Court cases are presented that illustrate some of the issues that courts have dealt with in the area of educational testing. While this study was developed primarily for parents, the booklet should also help school administrators and testing professionals learn about court cases and precedents relevant to some major issues in educational testing.…

In this paper, a parallel is drawn between the sex differences in moral reasoning suggested by Gilligan (1982) and a masculine and a feminine approach to measurement and statistics. A masculine approach could be seen to focus on the application of the rules of mathematics and statistics to measurement problems in ways which rational observers…

The paper reviews a series of models designed to reduce bias in the assessment process and describes the intent of each model and their interactive effect in the process of nonbiased educational evaluation. (Author/CL)

Two strategies for assessing item bias are discussed: methods comparing item difficulties unconditional on ability and methods comparing probabilities of response conditional on ability. Results suggest that the iterative logit method is an improvement on the noniterative one and is efficient in detecting biased and unbiased items. (Author/DWH)

This document contains three papers describing theoretical approaches and empirical findings concerning the role of anxiety in self-actualization. "Opposing Views of Anxiety and Self-Actualization" by Paul F. Zelhart describes theories of self-actualization that take opposite views of the role of anxiety in psychological development…

Two of the standards contained in the third draft of the new Joint Technical Standards for Test Development and Revision are discussed: Standard 3.13, mandating the use of multicultural material and the avoidance of material offensive to any major ethnic, cultural, or gender group; and Standard 3.14, mandating research and subsequent test revision…

McCauley and Colberg described a theory of transportability and provided data to demonstrate the feasibility of their approach. It is argued that the transportability notion resembles earlier cross cultural work and does not add new insights into cross cultural comparison. Their statistical checks do not preclude the possibility of bias.…

A factor analysis was conducted for a sample of 200 white and Hispanic children (ages 6-11) using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Results indicated that the two-factor solution was similar for the two groups, but there were notable differences for the three-factor solution, relative measures of "g," and subtest…

This study used meta-analysis research techniques to determine if there are differences in General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) validities and test scores between males and females. The sample consisted of 26,111 subjects from 122 Specific Aptitude Test Battery (SATB) validation or revalidation studies analyzed since 1972. Four approaches were…