Advances in Educational and Psychological Testing: Theory and Applications - Evaluation in Education and Human Services 1990 edition

Publisher Marketing: Over the last 20 years there have been a large number of technical advances and changes in the field of educational and psychological testing. According to Anne Anastasi, The decade of the 1980's has been a period of unusual advances in, psychological testing. Technological progress, theoretical sophistication, and increasing pro fessional responsibility are all evident in the fast-moving events in this field (A. Anastasi, Psychological Testing, Sixth Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1988). On the psychometric front, advances in topics such as item response theory, criterion-referenced measurement, generalizability theory, . analy sis of covariance structures, and validity generalization are reshaping the ways that ability and achievement tests are constructed and evaluated, and that test scores are interpreted. But \Jsychometric advances, as substantial and important as they have been, are only a fraction of the major changes in the field of testing. Today, for example, the computer is radically chang ing the ways in which tests are constructed, administered, and scored. Computers are being used to administer tests "adaptively." That is, the sequence of questions an examinee is administered depends upon his or her performance on earlier administered items in the test. Tests are "adapted" to the ability levels of the examinees who are being assessed. One result is shorter tests with little or no loss in measurement precision. Computers are also being used to store or bank test items. Later, items of interest can be selected, and the computer is used to print copies of the test."

Contributor Bio:  Hambleton, Ronald K Dave Bartram is Past President of the International Test Commission and is heading ITC projects on international guidelines for standards in test use and standards for computer-based testing and the Internet. He is Chair of the British Psychological Society's Steering Committee on Test Standards and Convenor of the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations Standing Committee on Tests and Testing. He is President-Elect of the IAAP's Division 2. Professor Bartram is Research Director for SHL Group plc. Prior to his appointment with SHL in 1998, he was Dean of the Faculty of Science and the Environment, and Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull. He is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and a Fellow of the Ergonomics Society. In 2004 he received the BPS award for Distinguished Contributions to Professional Psychology. His specialist area is computer-based testing and Internet assessment systems. Within SHL he is leading the development of their next generation of Internet-based delivery systems and the development of a multi-dimensional generic Competency Framework. He has published large numbers of popular, professional and academic articles and book chapters, and has been the Senior Editor of the BPS Test Reviews. He has been an editor or co-author of several works including the 1992, 1995 and 1997 BPS Reviews of Psychometric Tests; Organisational Effectiveness: the Role of Psychology (with Ivan Robertson and Militza Callinan, published in 2002 by Wiley) and the BPS Open Learning Programme for Level A (Occupational) Test Use (with Pat Lindley, published by BPS Blackwell in1994). Ronald K. Hambleton holds the title of Distinguished University Professor and is Chairperson of the Research and Evaluation Methods Program and Executive Director of the Center for Educational Assessment at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the United States. He earned a B. A. in 1966 from the University of Waterloo in Canada with majors in mathematics and psychology, and an M. A. in 1967 and Ph. D. in 1969 from the University of Toronto with specialties in psychometric methods and statistics. Professor Hambleton teaches graduate-level courses in educational and psychological testing, item response theory and applications, and classical test theory models and methods, and offers seminar courses on applied measurement topics. He is co-author of several textbooks including (with H. Swaminathan and H. Jane Rogers) Fundamentals of Item Response Theory (published by Sage in 1991) and Item Response Theory: Principles and Applications (published by Kluwer in 1985), and co-editor of several books including International Perspectives on Academic Assessment (with Thomas Oakland, published by Kluwer in 1995), Handbook of Modern Item Response Theory (with Wim van der Linden, published by Springer in 1997) and Adaptation of Educational and Psychological Tests for Cross-Cultural Assessment (with Peter Merenda and Charles Spielberger, published by Erlbaum in 2005). His research interests are in the areas of item response model applications to educational achievement and credentialing exams, standard-setting, test adaptation methodology, score reporting and computer-based testing. He has received several honors and awards for his more than 35 years of measurement research includinghonorary doctorates from Umea University in Sweden and the University of Oviedo in Spain, the 1994 National Council on Measurement in Education Career Award, the 2003 Association of Test Publisher National Award for Contributions to Computer-Based Testing, and the 2005 E. F. Lindquist Award for Contributions to Assessment. Professor Hambleton is a frequent consultant to state departments of education, national government agencies and credentialing organizations.