Measurement, Measuring Instruments, and Psychometric Theory

• Published in: Introduction to Psychometric Theory pp. 13 - 24
• Main Authors: Raykov, Tenko, Marcoulides, George A.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2011; Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Psychological testing & measurement; Intelligence Test Battery; Sum Score; Latent Dimension; Weight Scale; Classical Test Theory; Latent Continuum; Item Domain; Domain Sampling; WAIS; School Semester; Measuring Instrument; Medium Difficulty Level; Trait Evaluation; Item Domain Specifications; Subject Matter Domain; College Aspiration; Educational Disciplines; Psychometric Theory; Construct Measurement; Construct Indicators; Latent Constructs; Penev; Prior Theoretical Work; Beck Depression Inventory; Mathematics Ability Test
• ISBN: 0415878225; 9780415878227
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203841624-5

Measurement pervades almost every aspect of modern society, and measures of various kinds often accompany us throughout much of our lives. Measurement can be considered an activity consisting of the process of assigning numbers to individuals in a systematic way as a means of representing their studied properties. For example, a great variety of individual characteristics, such as achievement, aptitude, or intelligence, are measured frequently by various persons-e.g., teachers, instructors, clinicians, and administrators. Because the results of these measurements can have a profound influence on an individual’s life, it is important to understand how the resulting scores are derived and what the accuracy of the information about examined properties is, which these numbers contain. For the social, behavioral, and educational sciences that this book is mainly directed to, measurement is of paramount relevance. It is indeed very hard for us to imagine how progress in them could evolve without measurement and the appropriate use of measures. Despite its essential importance, however, measurement in these disciplines is plagued by a major problem. This problem lies in the fact that unlike many physical attributes, such as, say, length or mass, behavioral and related attributes cannot be measured directly.