Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally covers specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and related activities. Psychometrics is concerned with the objective measurement of latent constructs that cannot be directly observed. Examples of latent constructs include intelligence, introversion, mental disorders, and educational achievement. The levels of individuals on nonobservable latent variables are inferred through mathematical modeling based on what is observed from individuals' responses to items on tests and scales.
Alternative assessment is also known under various other terms, including:
Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address.
Educational assessment or educational evaluation is the systematic process of documenting and using empirical data on the knowledge, skill, attitudes, aptitude and beliefs to refine programs and improve student learning. Assessment data can be obtained from directly examining student work to assess the achievement of learning outcomes or can be based on data from which one can make inferences about learning. Assessment is often used interchangeably with test, but not limited to tests. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community, a course, an academic program, the institution, or the educational system as a whole. The word "assessment" came into use in an educational context after the Second World War.
Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a form of computer-based test that adapts to the examinee's ability level. For this reason, it has also been called tailored testing. In other words, it is a form of computer-administered test in which the next item or set of items selected to be administered depends on the correctness of the test taker's responses to the most recent items administered.
Gwyneth M. Boodoo is an American psychologist and expert on educational measurement.
William Burton Michael, a student of J. P. Guilford, earned his Ph.D. in quantitative psychometric methods from the University of Southern California. He started his teaching career at Princeton University, and in 1952 joined the faculty at University of Southern California, where he received a joint appointment as an associate professor in psychology and education and as the director of the USC Testing Bureau. Michael authored over 500 publications on test construction, measurement and evaluation, and personality assessment. He also co-chaired a joint committee of the American Psychological Association (APA), American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) that published Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, which is the national and international standard of professional guidelines for testing and measurement in research and practice. One of his most widely read books is entitled "Handbook in research and evaluation : a collection of principles, methods, and strategies useful in the planning, design, and evaluation of studies in education and the behavioral sciences".
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) was a measurement defined by the United States federal No Child Left Behind Act that allowed the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school and school district in the country was performing academically according to results on standardized tests. As defined by National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), AYP was "the amount of annual achievement growth to be expected by students in a particular school, district, or state in the U.S. federal accountability system, No Child Left Behind (NCLB)." AYP has been identified as one of the sources of controversy surrounding George W. Bush administration's Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Private schools were not required to make AYP.
The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing is a set of testing standards developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME).
Robert Lee Linn was an American educational psychologist who has made notable contributions to the understanding of educational assessments. He studied technical and policy issues relating to the application of test data, and the effects of high-stakes testing on teaching and learning. He was a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, past president of the American Educational Research Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), and former editor of the Journal of Educational Measurement. He completed his PhD and MA in educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 1965 until 1973, he held positions as a research scientist and later research division director at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. In 1973, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and in 1987 became a professor at the University of Colorado. Linn died in La Grange Park, Illinois, in December 2015 at the age of 77.
The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), established in 1930, is an independent educational research organisation based in Camberwell, Victoria (Melbourne) and with offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Dubai, Jakarta, London, New Delhi, Perth and Sydney. ACER develops and manages a range of testing and assessment services and conducts research and analysis in the education sector.
Test equating traditionally refers to the statistical process of determining comparable scores on different forms of an exam. It can be accomplished using either classical test theory or item response theory.
Cognitive skills, also called cognitive functions, cognitive abilities or cognitive capacities, are skills of the mind, as opposed to other types of skills such as motor skills. Some examples of cognitive skills are literacy, self-reflection, logical reasoning, abstract thinking, critical thinking, introspection and mental arithmetic. Cognitive skills vary in processing complexity, and can range from more fundamental processes such as perception and various memory functions, to more sophisticated processes such as decision making, problem solving and metacognition.
Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the National Council on Measurement in Education. The journal was established in 1982. Its current editor-in-chief is Deborah J. Harris. The journal covers educational measurement in the sense of both inferences made and actions taken on the basis of test scores or other modes of assessment.
The Journal of Educational Measurement is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the National Council on Measurement in Education. The journal was established in 1948 and assumed its current name and numbering in 1964. Blackwell Publishing began publishing the journal for the NCME in 2005. Its current editor-in-chief is Sandip Sinharay. The journal publishes original educational measurement research, provides reviews of measurement publications, and reports on innovative measurement applications.
ACT, Inc. is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, primarily known for the ACT, a standardized test designed to assess high school students' academic achievement and college readiness. For the U.S. high school graduating class of 2019, 52 percent of graduates had taken the ACT test; the more than 1.78 million students included virtually all high school graduates in 17 states.
Alina Anca von Davier is a psychometrician and researcher in computational psychometrics, machine learning, and education. Von Davier is a researcher, innovator, and an executive leader with over 20 years of experience in EdTech and in the assessment industry. She is the Chief of Assessment at Duolingo, where she leads the Duolingo English Test research and development area. She is also the Founder and CEO of EdAstra Tech, a service-oriented EdTech company. In 2022, she joined the University of Oxford as an Honorary Research Fellow, and Carnegie Mellon University as a Senior Research Fellow.
Randy Elliot Bennett is an American educational researcher who specializes in educational assessment. He is currently the Norman O. Frederiksen Chair in Assessment Innovation at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. His research and writing focus on bringing together advances in cognitive science, technology, and measurement to improve teaching and learning. He received the ETS Senior Scientist Award in 1996, the ETS Career Achievement Award in 2005, the Teachers College, Columbia University Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016, Fellow status in the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2017, the National Council on Measurement in Education's (NCME) Bradley Hanson Award for Contributions to Educational Measurement in 2019, the E. F. Lindquist Award from AERA and ACT in 2020, and elected membership in the National Academy of Education in 2022. Randy Bennett was elected President of both the International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA), a worldwide organization primarily constituted of governmental and NGO measurement organizations, and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), whose members are employed in universities, testing organizations, state and federal education departments, and school districts.
Mark Daniel Reckase is an educational psychologist and expert on quantitative methods and measurement who is known for his work on computerized adaptive testing, multidimensional item response theory, and standard setting in educational and psychological tests. Reckase is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the College of Education at Michigan State University.
Examination Boards in Nigeria are organizations that are given the mandate to conduct placement examinations in form of learning assessment for Nigerian students. This assessment aims at admitting the students into different institutions of learning at different levels of the Nigerian educational system. The major educational boards in Nigeria are Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), National Examination Council (NECO), West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the National Business and Technical Examination Board (NABTEB), Others include International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE). The National Board for Educational Measurement is a professional organization which oversees the assessment processes to ensure that the assessment process is just. It is an organization which checks the activities of the examination boards. This body also is involved in educational measurement by measuring how standardized tests are and the viability of performance-based assessments. Thay also help the Nigerian examination boards in assessment design and implementation.
