In Praise of Pluralism. A Comment on Borsboom
نویسنده
چکیده
I tend to agree with Professor Borsboom that psychology, and more generally the social sciences, could benefit from better psychometric modeling. However, if psychometric developments are to have more effect on everyday practice in psychology, psychometricians probably need to pay more attention to the substantive and methodological problems in various areas of psychology. For example, Professor Borsboom is critical of the Standards for educational and psychological testing (AERA, APA, NCME, 1999) for suggesting that group differences in testcriterion relationships are relevant to test bias. He bases his criticism on the finding that predictive invariance is not the same as measurement invariance. However, he fails to acknowledge the social, political, and ethical problems associated with failures of predictive invariance in high-stakes contexts (e.g., employment and admissions testing). The Standards are designed to provide test publishers and test users with guidance on a range of practical measurement problems. In this context, predictive invariance is a major issue in itself. If we want psychologists to pay more attention to psychometric analyses, these analyses need to recognize the psychologists’ problems and goals. Before getting into a discussion of Professor Borsboom’s analyses, it is probably useful to consider his desired state of affairs. He mentions several options for the interpretation of attributes, but seems to prefer what he calls a “reflective latent variable modeling scheme,” in which a latent attribute is assumed to cause the test behavior, and the psychometric model reflects this causal relationship. In an earlier paper, Professor Borsboom and his colleagues argued that a test is valid as a measure of an attribute:
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Psychometrika
دوره 71 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2006