Objective Measurement

The measurement practice section illustrates the application of objective measurement methods to personality psychology, a sociological study of school environment, personnel management, pain research, motor performance, and curriculum development. It emphasizes practice over theory, showing how measurement practice contributes valuable perspectives on substantive theory. The measurement theory section describes the development of new measurement models that extend objective measurement into learning contexts, rank-ordered data, and multidimensional profiles composed of subtests. These are complemented by a study of the use of objective measurement to examine the construct validity of items, and an exploration of the impact of text anxiety and item order on measurements. The final section examines recent developments in mathematical programming techniques applied to test assembly, parameter estimation and generalizability theory.

MARK WILSON is Professor of Education at the University of Californai at Berkeley, specializing in the areas of educational assessment, educational evaluation and applied statistics. He has published 28 articles in refereed journals, edited four books, contributed 23 chapters to edited books, and made many presentations at meetings of professional groups.