Sometimes referred to as "the Bible"[1] of psychometricians and testing industry professionals, these standards represent operational best practice is validity, fairness, reliability, design, delivery, scoring, and use of tests. In addition, these standards are required knowledge for licensed psychologists and are included on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) (see Domain 8, KN62).[2]
The current edition of The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing was released in July 2014. Five areas received particular attention in the 2014 revision: 1. Examining accountability issues associated with the uses of tests in educational policy 2. Broadening the concept of accessibility of tests for all examinees 3. Representing more comprehensively the role of tests in the workplace 4. Taking into account the expanding role of technology in testing 5. Improving the structure of the book for better communication of the standards
The Standards is written for the professional and for the educated layperson and addresses professional and technical issues of test development and use in education, psychology and employment.
Previous Editions
The 2014 edition is the 7th edition of The Standards, and it shares the exact same names as the 1985 and 1999 editions.[3]Technical recommendations for psychological tests and diagnostic techniques: A preliminary proposal (1952) and Technical recommendations for psychological tests and diagnostic techniques (1954) editions were quite brief. The 1966 edition, Standards for educational and psychological tests and manuals totaled just 40 pages. However, the 1985 edition, the first with the current name, more than doubled in size, and the 1999 edition nearly doubled again.
Since the 1999 edition, The Standards has had more in-depth background material in each chapter, a greater number of standards, and a significantly expanded glossary and index. The 1999 version Standards reflects changes in United Statesfederal law and measurement trends affecting validity; testing individuals with disabilities or different linguistic backgrounds; and new types of tests as well as new uses of existing tests. One of the major changes in the 2014 edition was raising the prominent of fairness within The Standards.
The 8th Edition (2025/2026)
In 2024, the sponsoring organizations (AERA, NCME, and APA) announced that they would be updating the guidelines once again, and The Standards would again be available both in printed and freely downloadable formats.
The 2025 edition's management committee is made up of one representative from each of the sponsoring organizations: Michael Rodriguez (AERA), Fred Oswald (APA), and Kristen Huff (NCME).[4] Ye Tong a Senior Vice President at the National Board of Medical Examiners[5] and University of Maryland Professor of Psychology Andres De Los Reyes[6]] were selected as the co-chairs of the committee in February, 2024.[7]
The entire joint committee membership has 16 members.[8]
Ye Tong, PhD, Co-Chair, NBME
Andres De Los Reyes, PhD, Co-Chair, University of Maryland
Chad Buckendahl, PhD, ACS Ventures
Ellen Forte, PhD, edCount
Laura Hamilton, PhD, American Institutes for Research
Qiwei He, PhD, Georgetown University
Nathan Kuncel, PhD, University of Minnesota
Cara Laitusis, PhD, Center for Assessment
Maria Marquine, PhD, Duke University
Rochelle Michel, PhD, Smarter Balanced
Michael Russell, PhD, Boston College
Pohai Schultz, PhD, University of Hawai’i
Steve Sireci, PhD, University of Massachusetts
Steve Stark, PhD, University of South Florida
Mark Wilson, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Frank Worrell, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
The management committee has already indicated an interest in updating The Standards more frequently. It also has announced that it hopes to provide greater transparency about disagreement among committee members. That is, to be more clear about when there is a strong consensus and when there is disagreement among experts about best practices.
Overview of the 6th (1999) edition's organization and content
Part I: Test Construction, Evaluation, and Documentation
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.
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how individuals relate to each other and to their environments.
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 by examining student work directly to assess the achievement of learning outcomes or it is based on data from which one can make inferences about learning. Assessment is often used interchangeably with test but is 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.
Susana Urbina is a Peruvian-American psychologist. She received her Ph.D. in Psychometrics from Fordham University in 1972 and was licensed in Florida in 1976. She currently teaches at University of North Florida, where her principal areas of teaching and research are psychological testing and assessment.
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".
Quantitative psychology is a field of scientific study that focuses on the mathematical modeling, research design and methodology, and statistical analysis of psychological processes. It includes tests and other devices for measuring cognitive abilities. Quantitative psychologists develop and analyze a wide variety of research methods, including those of psychometrics, a field concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement.
The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation is an American/Canadian based Standards Developer Organization (SDO). The Joint Committee, created in 1975, represents a coalition of major professional associations formed in 1975 to develop evaluation standards and improve the quality of standardized evaluation. The Committee has thus far published three sets of standards for evaluations. The Personnel Evaluation Standards was published in 1988 and updated in 2008, The Program Evaluation Standards was published in 1994, and The Student Evaluation Standards was published in 2003.
David Reading Krathwohl was an American educational psychologist. He was the director of the Bureau of Educational Research at Michigan State University and was also a past president of the American Educational Research Association, where he served in multiple capacities, as a member of the research advisory committee for the Bureau of Research of the USOE and as regional chairman of the board of trusties of the Eastern Regional Institute for Education.
Nambury S. Raju was an American psychology professor known for his work in psychometrics, meta-analysis, and utility theory. He was a Fellow of the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology.
Anne Anastasi was an American psychologist best known for her pioneering development of psychometrics. Her generative work, Psychological Testing, remains a classic text in which she drew attention to the individual being tested and therefore to the responsibilities of the testers. She called for them to go beyond test scores, to search the assessed individual's history to help them to better understand their own results and themselves.
Lloyd Bond was an American researcher in the field of psychometrics. As of 2009, he was a consulting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Stanford, California; he served as a senior scholar at the foundation from 2002 to 2008.
The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) is a licensing examination developed by the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) that is used in most U.S. states and Canadian provinces.
Rodney L. Lowman is an American psychologist, academic administrator and entrepreneur whose major contributions have been in the areas of career assessment and counseling, ethical issues in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the integration of clinical psychology and I-O psychology and helping to develop the field of consulting psychology. In a study of the most prolific contributors to the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, Lowman was rated the second highest contributor for articles for the period 1992–2007.
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, elected membership in the National Academy of Education in 2022, and the AERA Cognition and Assessment Special Interest Group Outstanding Contribution to Research in Cognition and Assessment Award in 2024. 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.
Jacqueline P. Leighton is a Canadian-Chilean educational psychologist, academic and author. She is a full professor in the Faculty of Education as well as vice-dean of Faculty Development and Faculty Affairs at the University of Alberta.
Matthias von Davier is a psychometrician, academic, inventor, and author. He is the executive director of the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development and the J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor in Education at Boston College.
Kurt F. Geisinger is an American psychologist, writer, and research professor known for his work on psychological testing and assessment. Currently serving as the Director of the Buros Center for Testing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has also been honored as the Meierhenry Distinguished University Professor at the same institution.
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