Drawing on the work of internationally acclaimed experts in the field, Handbook of Item Response Theory, Volume One: Models presents all major item response models. This first volume in a three-volume set covers many model developments that have occurred in item response theory (IRT) during the last 20 years. It describes models for different response formats or response processes, the need of deeper parameterization due to a multilevel or hierarchical structure of the response data, and other extensions and insights. In Volume One, all chapters have a common format with each chapter focusing on one family of models or modeling approach. An introductory section in every chapter includes some history of the model and a motivation of its relevance. Subsequent sections present the model more formally, treat the estimation of its parameters, show how to evaluate its fit to empirical data, illustrate the use of the model through an empirical example, and discuss further applications and remaining research issues.

Drawing on the work of internationally acclaimed experts in the field, Handbook of Item Response Theory, Volume 3: Applications presents applications of item response theory to practical testing problems. While item response theory may be known primarily for its advances in theoretical modeling of responses to test items, equal progress has been made in its providing innovative solutions to daily testing problems. This third volume in a three-volume set highlights the major applications. Specifically, this volume covers applications to test item calibration, item analysis, model fit checking, test-score interpretation, optimal test design, adaptive testing, standard setting, and forensic analyses of response data. It describes advances in testing in areas such as large-scale educational assessment, psychological testing, health measurement, and measurement of change. In addition, it extensively reviews computer programs available to run any of the models and applications in Volume One and Three. Features Includes contributions from internationally acclaimed experts with a history of advancing applications of item response theory Provides extensive cross-referencing and common notation across all chapters in this three-volume set Underscores the importance of treating each application in a statistically rigorous way Reviews major computer programs for item response theory analyses and applications. Wim J. van der Linden is a distinguished scientist and director of research and innovation at Pacific Metrics Corporation. Dr. van der Linden is also a professor emeritus of measurement and data analysis at the University of Twente. His research interests include test theory, adaptive testing, optimal test assembly, parameter linking, test equating, and response-time modeling as well as decision theory and its applications to problems of educational decision making.

In the wake of initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and the use of high-stakes testing, the emphasis in schools has been on drill and practice for the test. Genuine understanding and critical thinking have been increasingly shortchanged. As a result, students have fewer opportunities to advance their insight into cognitive and emotional challenges, even though both teachers and parents recognize the importance of developing deliberative and reflective thinking skills. This book uniquely combines two things. First, it provides resources for classroom teachers in middle and secondary school that make it possible to, at a moment's notice, take advantage of a teachable moment by drawing students into productive intellectual discussions. Second, it gives the reader an overview of the rationale and the research base for engaging students in educational activities that are truly intellectual and that are not limited to training for testing success.

This fascinating, well-written, and potentially controversial book is a wide-ranging exploration of the essential issues relevant to IQ. Charles Locurto examines data on the effectiveness of preschools; the impacts of adoption, heredity, and the role of environment; he evaluates the possibility of enhancing IQ in the early years; and he brilliantly describes and analyzes the major cases relevant to IQ research. "Sense and Nonsense about IQ" is truly an excellent sourcebook on the subject of human intelligence and its measurement.

Locurto reaches conclusions about the benefits of preschools, adoptions, social class, and family events that will gain attention and evoke discussion. The balance of the work, neither identifying with those who follow the extremes of hereditarianism or of environmentalism, ensures that Locurto's volume will be a most valuable resource for all with a serious interest in this subject which has so many far-reaching implications.

Adolescence is a distinct period of development that presents a number of special challenges. This fact has important implications for professionals selecting and administering assessment procedures and interpreting the data they yield, yet assessment texts have focused on adults or children and devoted minimal attention to adolescents. This book constitutes the first up-to-date and practical guide to the effective psychological assessment of adolescents.
Throughout, the author's emphasis is on standardized instruments. Their use, he argues, provides more valid information about individuals, leads to better treatment or placement decisions, and contributes to the more efficient management of organizational resources than does reliance on clinical interviews and judgment alone.
"Assessing Adolescents in Educational, Counseling, and Other Settings" will be welcomed by all those professionally involved in the assessment of adolescents--psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, child care agency staff, and educators--as well as by those who must make decisions based on their assessments--school principals, youth court judges, and managers of residential treatment facilities among others. Developmental researchers will also find this review of available standardized tools helpful in their work.

This book addresses challenges in the theoretically and empirically adequate assessment of competencies in educational settings. It presents the scientific projects of the priority program "Competence Models for Assessing Individual Learning Outcomes and Evaluating Educational Processes," which focused on competence assessment across disciplines in Germany. The six-year program coordinated 30 research projects involving experts from the fields of psychology, educational science, and subject-specific didactics. The main reference point for all projects is the concept of "competencies," which are defined as "context-specific cognitive dispositions that are acquired and needed to successfully cope with certain situations or tasks in specific domains" (Koeppen et al., 2008, p. 62). The projects investigate different aspects of competence assessment: The primary focus lies on the development of cognitive models of competencies, complemented by the construction of psychometric models based on these theoretical models. In turn, the psychometric models constitute the basis for the construction of instruments for effectively measuring competencies. The assessment of competencies plays a key role in optimizing educational processes and improving the effectiveness of educational systems. This book contributes to this challenging endeavor by meeting the need for more integrative, interdisciplinary research on the structure, levels, and development of competencies.

Tests and Assessments in Counseling provides students with current information on assessment tools and techniques through detailed case scenarios and vignettes. Going beyond basic information about a multitude of assessments, the authors focus on the use of instruments in individual cases to allow readers to more fully grasp the integral relationship between tests and assessment data and the counseling process. Chapters guide students through choosing the most effective assessment tool, successfully administering the assessment, and making meaningful and useful results of the data with the client. Test questions are also included at the end of each chapter.

The Wartegg Drawing Completion Test (WDCT) is a semi-structured, graphic, performance-based personality test, created by Ehrig Wartegg (1939). With a foundation in Gestalt and Psychodynamic theory, the WDCT has been used widely throughout Europe, South America, and Japan, but only recently has become available in the United States. Initial scoring systems for the WDCT were considered cumbersome and lacked research-driven validation. In response to these factors, Alessandro Crisi, following years of clinical practice and research, developed the Crisi Wartegg System (CWS; 1998, 2007), a normed and standardized administration, scoring, and interpretation system for the WDCT. Over the past three decades, Dr. Crisi has refined and expanded the CWS through research, broadening the scope of the measure, and increasing the accessibility of the system to clinicians. This manual provides a comprehensive guide to the CWS, made available to English-speaking clinicians for the first time.

D-scoring Method of Measurement presents a unified framework of classical and latent measurement referred to as D-scoring method of measurement (DSM). Provided are detailed descriptions of DSM procedures and illustrative examples of how to apply the DSM in various scenarios of measurement. The DSM is designed to combine merits of the traditional CTT and IRT for the purpose of transparency, ease of interpretations, computational simplicity of test scoring and scaling, and practical efficiency, particularly in large-scale assessments. Through detailed descriptions of DSM procedures, this book shows how practical applications of such procedures are facilitated by the inclusion of operationalized guidance for their execution using the computer program DELTA for DSM-based scoring, equating, and item analysis of test data. In doing so, the book shows how DSM procedures can be readily translated into computer source codes for other popular software packages such as R. D-scoring Method of Measurement equips researchers and practitioners in the field of educational and psychological measurement with a comprehensive understanding of the DSM as a unified framework of classical and latent scoring, equating, and psychometric analysis.

This book explains the psychological assessment process and reviews the origins of psychological testing, referral and testing processes, and prominent psychological assessment instruments. Most important, this book details how to evaluate testing data and use them to understand an individual's needs and to inform interventions and treatments. This book addresses specific domains of psychological assessment, including: * Intelligence and academic achievement. * Speech-language and visual-motor abilities. * Memory, attention/concentration, and executive functioning. * Behavioral and social-emotional functioning. * Developmental status. Practical Guide to Child and Adolescent Psychological Testing is an essential resource for clinicians, primary care providers, and other practitioners as well as researchers, professors, and graduate students in the fields of child, school, and developmental psychology, pediatrics and social work, child and adolescent psychiatry, primary care medicine, and related disciplines.

Originally published in 1945, this title was intended mainly for use by teachers wishing to test children from ages 2-8 in order to establish their intelligence. Based on feedback to the author, this revised edition also includes tests for children up to the age of 15. The tests were used to give a teacher some idea of how much could be expected of each child, so that the class, when practicable, could be divided into groups of varying abilities, which could proceed at paces suited to their respective capacities. It was felt that if 'inborn intellectual deficiencies' could be identified at an early age the children could have 'special treatment', or in certain cases be placed in a 'special school', rather than be potentially written off as 'lazy'. Today this can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

This is an easy-to-use reference to the most effective play therapy techniques and their substantiated results. Play therapy is not an approach based on guess, trial and error, or whims of the therapist at the moment. It is a well-thought-out, philosophically conceived, developmentally based, and research-supported method of helping children cope with and overcome the problems they experience in the process of living their lives. Concise digests of play therapy procedures explore the most difficult, as well as the most common problems encountered by play therapists. These digests cover play therapy approaches based on a variesty of theoretical positions for dealing with a broad range of specific problems.

Compliance with federal equal employment opportunity regulations, including civil rights laws and affirmative action requirements, requires collection and analysis of data on disparities in employment outcomes, often referred to as adverse impact. While most human resources (HR) practitioners are familiar with basic adverse impact analysis, the courts and regulatory agencies are increasingly relying on more sophisticated methods to assess disparities. Employment data are often complicated, and can include a broad array of employment actions (e.g., selection, pay, promotion, termination), as well as data that span multiple protected groups, settings, and points in time. In the era of "big data," the HR analyst often has access to larger and more complex data sets relevant to employment disparities. Consequently, an informed HR practitioner needs a richer understanding of the issues and methods for conducting disparity analyses. This book brings together the diverse literature on disparity analysis, spanning work from statistics, industrial/organizational psychology, human resource management, labor economics, and law, to provide a comprehensive and integrated summary of current best practices in the field. Throughout, the description of methods is grounded in the legal context and current trends in employment litigation and the practices of federal regulatory agencies. The book provides guidance on all phases of disparity analysis, including: How to structure diverse and complex employment data for disparity analysis How to conduct both basic and advanced statistical analyses on employment outcomes related to employee selection, promotion, compensation, termination, and other employment outcomes How to interpret results in terms of both practical and statistical significance Common practical challenges and pitfalls in disparity analysis and strategies to deal with these issues

Compliance with federal equal employment opportunity regulations, including civil rights laws and affirmative action requirements, requires collection and analysis of data on disparities in employment outcomes, often referred to as adverse impact. While most human resources (HR) practitioners are familiar with basic adverse impact analysis, the courts and regulatory agencies are increasingly relying on more sophisticated methods to assess disparities. Employment data are often complicated, and can include a broad array of employment actions (e.g., selection, pay, promotion, termination), as well as data that span multiple protected groups, settings, and points in time. In the era of "big data," the HR analyst often has access to larger and more complex data sets relevant to employment disparities. Consequently, an informed HR practitioner needs a richer understanding of the issues and methods for conducting disparity analyses. This book brings together the diverse literature on disparity analysis, spanning work from statistics, industrial/organizational psychology, human resource management, labor economics, and law, to provide a comprehensive and integrated summary of current best practices in the field. Throughout, the description of methods is grounded in the legal context and current trends in employment litigation and the practices of federal regulatory agencies. The book provides guidance on all phases of disparity analysis, including: How to structure diverse and complex employment data for disparity analysis How to conduct both basic and advanced statistical analyses on employment outcomes related to employee selection, promotion, compensation, termination, and other employment outcomes How to interpret results in terms of both practical and statistical significance Common practical challenges and pitfalls in disparity analysis and strategies to deal with these issues

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

There have been many important changes in the participation of women and men in American society over the past quarter-century. Tests play a role in those changes by providing evidence of the diverse achievement and proficiency of women and men. They aid the learning process and reflect inequalities in opportunity to learn and participate. In addition, they provide useful information in considering what alternatives in education and work make most sense for individuals and influence views about groups of students, educational programs, and a wide range of issues. For all of these reasons, it is important that tests assess fairly and reflect accurately the ways young people are and are not achieving as well as desired. The test performance of women and men is a research topic of historical interest and has received much attention in recent years. Because of this increased interest, there is a great deal of new research and data available. The purpose of the study presented in this volume was to review this new information with two objectives in mind: *to clarify patterns of gender difference and similarity in test performance and related achievements, and *to see what implications those findings might have for fair assessment and, as a corollary, examine the assessment process as a possible source of gender differences. This study is interested in tests used in education to assess developed knowledge and skill. In order to gain a broader view of gender similarity and difference, the contributors looked at other types of measures and other characteristics of young women and men. Their hope is to contribute to a firmer basis for insuring fairness in tests--an objective which is particularly important as the field moves increasingly to new forms of assessment in which there is less experience.

Psychological tests provide reliable and objective standards by which individuals can be evaluated in education and employment. Therefore accurate judgements must depend on the reliability and quality of the tests themselves. Originally published in 1986, this handbook by an internationally acknowledged expert provided an introductory and comprehensive treatment of the business of constructing good tests. Paul Kline shows how to construct a test and then to check that it is working well. Covering most kinds of tests, including computer presented tests of the time, Rasch scaling and tailored testing, this title offers: a clear introduction to this complex field; a glossary of specialist terms; an explanation of the objective of reliability; step-by-step guidance through the statistical procedures; a description of the techniques used in constructing and standardizing tests; guidelines with examples for writing the test items; computer programs for many of the techniques. Although the computer testing will inevitably have moved on, students on courses in occupational, educational and clinical psychology, as well as in psychological testing itself, would still find this a valuable source of information, guidance and clear explanation.

This book critically examines the historical and philosophical foundations of construct validity theory (CVT), and how these have and continue to inform and constrain the conceptualization of validity and its application in research. CVT has had an immense impact on how researchers in the behavioural sciences conceptualize and approach their subject matter. Yet, there is equivocation regarding the foundations of the CVT framework as well as ambiguities concerning the nature of the "constructs" that are its raison d'etre. The book is organized in terms of three major parts that speak, respectively, to the historical, philosophical, and pragmatic dimensions of CVT. The primary objective is to provide researchers and students with a critical lens through which a deeper understanding may be gained of both the utility and limitations of CVT and the validation practices to which it has given rise.

Transforming the Measurement of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education proposes a dynamic new model for educational measurement by reconceptualizing the field of learning analytics. Revolving around the agency and daily work of those in the field, this book describes how colleges and universities can be better structured for quality learning, showcases new tools for gathering emergent feedback, and demonstrates how that feedback can be used effectively across higher education organizations. Leaders and practitioners at all levels are offered new approaches for organizational and technological design that ensure the type of data and the way it is gathered serve the ultimate goal of high quality learning and teaching.

Transforming the Measurement of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education proposes a dynamic new model for educational measurement by reconceptualizing the field of learning analytics. Revolving around the agency and daily work of those in the field, this book describes how colleges and universities can be better structured for quality learning, showcases new tools for gathering emergent feedback, and demonstrates how that feedback can be used effectively across higher education organizations. Leaders and practitioners at all levels are offered new approaches for organizational and technological design that ensure the type of data and the way it is gathered serve the ultimate goal of high quality learning and teaching.

This classic volume outlines, for both students and professionals, the mathematical theories and equations that are necessary for evaluating a test and for quantifying its characteristics. The author utilizes formulas that evaluate both the reliability and the validity of tests. He also provides the means for evaluating the reliability and validity of total test scores and individual item analysis. The work remains one of the only books on classical test theory to discuss applications, "true score" theory, the effect of test length on reliability and validity, and the effects of univariate and multivariate selection on validity.

This book declines to take for granted the widespread assumption that existing psychometric procedures provide scientific measurement. The currently fashionable concepts of measurement within psychology -- operationalism and representationalism -- are critically examined, and the classical view, that measurement is the assessment of quantity, is defended. Within this framework, it is shown how conjoint measurement can be used to test the hypothesis that variables are quantitative. This theme is developed in detail using familiar psychological examples, such as Thurstone's law of comparative judgment, multidimensional scaling, and Coombs' theory of unfolding.

Originally published in 1979, this title represents a summary of 17 years of research centring around the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and the theory from which the test was derived. Now an integral part of personality testing, including adaptations for use with children, this reissue is a chance to see where it all began.

Appreciation of the beauty and complexity of the human mind when perceiving an ambiguous stimulus led Dr. Hermann Rorschach to develop his scientific method eighty years ago. Full of gratitude for his brief life and work, the editors hope this volume will stand as an idiographic testament to his brilliance for the Rorschach students of the future. The contributors are clearly the most notable Rorschach clinicians in practice, and their work integrates the Comprehensive System and psychoanalytic methods. This book is organized into four sections. Within each of the first three sections -- devoted to psychotic, borderline, and neurotic disorders respectively -- the editors and invited authors have contributed Rorschach case studies which vertically cut a character pathology, personality disorder, or clinical diagnosis through a particular level of personality organization. The last section charts the enormously varied course that Rorschach work can navigate -- from the understanding of a Nobel laureate, the pain of trauma and transexuality, and the Nazi perversion of youth, to the consensus Rorschach in couple's therapy and cutting edge work in neuropsychology.