Discusses the present shortage of measurement professionals and makes some suggestions for actions the measurement community could take to increase the number and diversity of educational measurement professionals. Instead of increasing the number of doctoral degrees in psychometrics, the profession should focus on increasing the number of…

Discusses objectivity in psychosocial measurement, considering what it is, why it is important, and how it can be achieved. Presents an approach to achieving full objectivity in psychosocial measurement that is adapted from a publication of the American Society for Testing and Materials describing standard practice for conducting an…

Outlines a covariance structure analysis approach to the study of parameter trends. Uses the program RAMONA to illustrate the method by fitting a corresponding confirmatory factor analysis model to correlational data from a study involving several psychometric tests and fluid intelligence tasks. (SLD)

Presents a fully Bayesian analysis for the Probability Matrix Decomposition (PMD) model using the Gibbs sampler. Identifies the advantages of this approach and illustrates the approach by applying the PMD model to opinions of respondents from different countries concerning the possibility of contracting AIDS in a specific situation. (SLD)

Discusses the correlation between inspection time (IT) and psychometric abilities. Recent research suggest that IT is probably sensitive to both focused attentional capacities to detect organization and change under severe time constraints and to decision processes that monitor responding. Discusses implications for the use of IT in explaining…

Psychological reactance is an important construct for social scientists. The measure most often used to tap psychological reactance is the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (TRS). However, little research to date has examined the psychometric properties of the TRS. Eight hundred and eighty-three individuals completed the TRS and their responses were…

In this paper, we reconsider the merits of unfolding solutions based on loss functions involving a normalization on the variance per subject. In the literature, solutions based on Stress-2 are often diagnosed to be degenerate in the majority of cases. Here, the focus lies on two frequently occurring types of degeneracies. The first type typically…

The rater agreement literature is complicated by the fact that it must accommodate at least two different properties of rating data: the number of raters (two versus more than two) and the rating scale level (nominal versus metric). While kappa statistics are most widely used for nominal scales, intraclass correlation coefficients have been…

Current psychometric models of choice behavior are strongly influenced by Thurstone's (1927, 1931) experimental and statistical work on measuring and scaling preferences. Aided by advances in computational techniques, choice models can now accommodate a wide range of different data types and sources of preference variability among respondents…

This article discusses Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner became a hero among educators simply by redefining talents as "intelligences" in a theory first proposed in 1983. Since then, his theory has undergone incremental but not fundamental change, including the addition of one intelligence (bringing the…

Imagine a current HMO that covered only the procedures and diseases recognized by the medical profession in 1950. The thought is ridiculous because in such a rapidly developing field as medicine, no one would expect practice to be frozen at the level of scientific knowledge attained 50 years ago. The author believes this is what has happened in…

This study assessed the psychometric properties of a recently developed health-related quality of life (HRQOL) instrument (Vecu et Sante Percue de l'Adolescent -Malade, VSP-AM) in 172 adolescents receiving growth hormone. The VSP-AM was cross-culturally adapted into English and tested for internal consistency (@a=0.78-0.89 subscales, 0.74 Summary…

A detection-theoretic analysis of the auditory localization of dual-impulse stimuli is described, and a model for the processing of spatial cues in the echo pulse is developed. Although for over 50 years "echo suppression" has been the topic of intense theoretical and empirical study within the hearing sciences, only a rudimentary understanding of…

A number of measures have been used in epidemiological studies of children's exposure to community violence, yet the quality of these instruments is not uniformly good. This paper undertakes a systematic review of the most commonly used (or most promising) self-report or interview-administered instruments, with regard to their conceptual bases and…

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) requires responding to category contrasts such as young versus old, male versus female, and pleasant versus unpleasant. In introducing the IAT, A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, and J. L. K. Schwartz (1998) proposed that IAT measures reflect mental structures involving the nominal features of the IAT's categories…