Psychometrics and its discontents: an historical perspective on the discourse of the measurement tradition.

Psychometrics has recently undergone extensive criticism within the medical education literature. The use of quantitative measurement using psychometric instruments such as response scales is thought to emphasize a narrow range of relevant learner skills and competencies. Recent reviews and commentaries suggest that a paradigm shift might be presently underway. We argue for caution, in that the psychometrics approach and the quantitative account of competencies that it reflects is based on a rich discussion regarding measurement and scaling that led to the establishment of this paradigm. Rather than reflecting a homogeneous discipline focused on core competencies devoid of consideration of context, the psychometric community has a history of discourse and debate within the field, with an acknowledgement that the techniques and instruments developed within psychometrics are heuristics that must be used pragmatically.

Aims of teachers' psychometry: intelligence testing in Barcelona (1920).

After World War I, members of the teaching profession in Spain were interested in appropriating psychological measurement and bringing it within the expertise of their occupational field, with the intention of upgrading their profession. As professionals devoted to the child, educators attempted to explore the infantile psyche using intelligence tests, with the intention of making scientific contributions to the field of psychology. In the present article we take as a key event one particular application enacted by a Catalan teacher, and insert that case study into the complex local scientific and educational context. It was a context in which the professional interests of teachers competed with those of school physicians, psychologists, and pedologists, at a time when important changes in pedagogical methods and school systems were under way. In the hand of teachers, intelligence testing was mainly seen as a malleable method on which to base daily educational practice on a more individualized and scientific basis. The historical analysis of the case turned out to be instrumental in the identification of common features and particularities attributable to specific local needs. In a society where public schooling competed with private schools, the results of mental testing were used to demonstrate publicly the excellent intellectual level of children attending a public graded primary school in Barcelona. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Searching for South Asian intelligence: psychometry in British India, 1919-1940.

This paper describes the introduction and development of intelligence testing in British India. Between 1919 and 1940 experimenters such as C. Herbert Rice, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, and Venkatrao Vithal Kamat imported a number of intelligence tests, adapting them to suit a variety of South Asian languages and contexts. Charting South Asian psychometry's gradual move from American missionary efforts toward the state, this paper argues that political reforms in the 1920s and 1930s affected how psychometry was "indigenized" in South Asia. Describing how approaches to race and caste shifted across instruments and over time, this paper charts the gradual recession, within South Asian psychometry, of a "race" theory of caste. Describing some of the ways in which this "late colonial" period affected the postcolonial landscape, the paper concludes by suggesting potential lines for further inquiry into the later career of intelligence testing in India and Pakistan.

The Prolo Scale: history, evolution and psychometric properties.

BACKGROUND: The Prolo Scale (PS) is a widely accepted assessment tool for lumbar spinal surgery results. Nevertheless, in the literature there is a dearth of consensus about its application, interpretation and accuracy. The purpose of this review is to investigate the evolution of the PS from its introduction in 1986 to the present, including an analysis of different versions of the scale and research on the existing studies investigating its psychometric properties. MATERIALS AND METHODS: PubMed, Cochrane Library and PEDro databases were searched. Studies in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German published from 1986 to December 2012 were analyzed. RESULTS: The original lumbar surgery outcome scale consisted of two Likert-type scales (economic and functional). There are three more versions of the scale: Schnee proposed one consisting of 10 items, Brantigan made one with 20 items and introduced 2 more subscales (pain and medication), and Davis adapted the scale for the cervical spine. PS is often mentioned without any specific reference to the version used; therefore, a homogeneous comparison of studies is difficult to achieve. Several authors agree on the need to embrace a multidimensional measuring system to evaluate low back pain (LBP), but there is still no consensus regarding the most reliable tool. To date, PS has been mostly used as secondary outcome measure in association with validated primary measures for LBP. CONCLUSIONS: The Prolo Scale has been adopted for clinical examination for 20 years because it is easy to administer and useful to compare significant amounts of data from surgical studies carried out at different times. Although several authors demonstrated the scale sensitivity among a battery of tests, no thorough validation study was found in the current literature.

Foreword: emergence of efficiency in health outcome measurement.

Psychosocial measurement in the 21st Century is a dynamic field that is addressing challenges unthinkable even a generation ago. Sophisticated methods and modern technology has brought psychometrics to the cusp of scientific objectivity. This Foreword provides historical context and intellectual foundations for appreciating contemporary psychometric advancements, as well as a perspective on issues that are determining future advances. Efficiency in outcome measurement is one of these forces driving future advances. Efficiency, however, can easily become conflated with expediency, and neither can substitute for effectiveness. Blind efficiency runs risk of degrading measurement properties. Likewise, measurement advancement without accommodation to ordinary needs leads to practical rejection. Bouchard presents a biographical link between scientific physics and Rasch models that opened the door for fundamental psychosocial measurement. Symposium papers presented in this issue present a broad range of ideas about contemporary psychosocial measurement. Granger summarizes key ideas underlying achievement of objective, fundamental measurement. Massof, then, Stenner and Stone present alternative perspectives on scientific knowledge systems, which are prominent landmarks on the psychometric horizon. Fisher and Burton describe fundamental measurement methodology in diagnosis and implementation of technology, which will consolidate isolated and redundant constructs in PROMIS. Hart presents an overview on computer adaptive testing, which is the vanguard in health outcome measurement. Kisala and Tulsky present a qualitative strategy that is improving sensitivity and validity of new outcome measures. Their diversity reflects an intense competition of ideas about solving measurement problems. Their collection together in this special issue is a milestone and tribute to scientific ingenuity.

The Danish draft board's intelligence test, Børge Priens Prøve: psychometric properties and research applications through 50 years.

For over 50 years the Danish draft board has used the same test, Børge Priens Prøve (BPP) for cognitive abilities, involving four paper-and-pencil subtests, to assess suitability for conscription. The potential availability of test scores has been an invaluable resource for research into factors relating to intelligence. In this article the circumstances of the original development of the test are briefly presented, followed by a description of the four subtests and the conditions of testing, scoring and result registration. Over forty studies are identified, including some unpublished, which have explored the psychometric properties of the BPP and have shown the relationships between intelligence as measured by the BPP and a wide range of biological, social and health-related factors.

An Academic Genealogy of Psychometric Society Presidents.

In this paper, we present the academic genealogy of presidents of the Psychometric Society by constructing a genealogical tree, in which Ph.D. students are encoded as descendants of their advisors. Results show that most of the presidents belong to five distinct lineages that can be traced to Wilhelm Wundt, James Angell, William James, Albert Michotte or Carl Friedrich Gauss. Important psychometricians Lee Cronbach and Charles Spearman play only a marginal role. The genealogy systematizes important historical knowledge that can be used to inform studies on the history of psychometrics and exposes the rich and multidisciplinary background of the Psychometric Society.

Thomas F. Cash: A multidimensional innovator in the measurement of body image; Some lessons learned and some lessons for the future of the field.

Accurate measurement of constructs under investigation is an often-overlooked ingredient of research. However, sound use of strategies to ensure valid and reliable assessment is the building block for any research design, data analysis, and outcome interpretation. In this paper, we note how Thomas F. Cash has pioneered and steered this process in the field of body image for over 30 years-in fact, in the inaugural issue of Body Image, the first article after the editorial introduction focused on measurement (see Thompson, 2004). In the current paper, we detail some of the seminal measures developed by Thomas Cash as well as update the common errors in the (mis)measurement of body image noted in Thompson (2004). The future of body image assessment is bright if we focus on the illumination of past work by Thomas Cash.

Picturing ethnopsychology: A colonial psychiatrist's struggles to examine Javanese minds, 1910-1925.

This article explores C. F. Engelhard's struggles to construct psychometric devices for the Netherlands Indies between 1910 and 1925. A young Dutch psychiatrist, Engelhard moved to the Netherlands Indies in 1916, where he applied his clinical experience to subject Javanese individuals to mental assessment devices. He imagined that basic picture tests and one's orientation in time provided apt solutions to the cross-cultural challenges facing him. To turn his prototypes into actual tests, Engelhard had to leave his daily work environment and move into the surrounding villages. Aided by local chiefs and his assistant, Soekirman, he managed to set up temporary testing sites, where he examined hundreds of Javanese individuals. Yet despite his attempts to transform Javanese farmers into subjects capable of taking a psychological test, the Javanese remained free to make-or fail to make-meaning out of Engelhard's images. Even though the psychiatrist went to great lengths in taking into account the particular social and cultural features of psychological practice in a colonial context, a vast chasm remained to exist between him and his test takers. This article examines Engelhard's practices against the backdrop of his training as a Western psychiatrist, colonial ideology in the Netherlands Indies, and the reception of his research by other colonial scientists with a wide range of attitudes about "the native mind." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A Creation Narrative for the Psychometric Society and Psychometrika: In the Beginning There Was Paul Horst.

A review is provided for the creation of the Psychometric Society in 1935, and the establishment of its journal, Psychometrika, in 1936. This document is part of the 80th anniversary celebration for Psychometrika's founding, held during the annual meeting of the Psychometric Society in July of 2016 in Asheville, NC.

The early evolution of Jean Piaget's clinical method.

This article analyzes the early evolution of Jean Piaget's renowned "clinical method" in order to investigate the method's strikingly original and generative character. Throughout his 1st decade in the field, Piaget frequently discussed and justified the many different approaches to data collection he used. Analysis of his methodological progression during this period reveals that Piaget's determination to access the genuine convictions of children eventually led him to combine 3 distinct traditions in which he had been trained-naturalistic observation, psychometrics, and the psychiatric clinical examination. It was in this amalgam, first evident in his 4th text, that Piaget discovered the clinical dynamic that would drive the classic experiments for which he is most well known.

Of psychometric means: Starke R. Hathaway and the popularization of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

ARGUMENT: The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was developed at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in the 1930s and 1940s. It became a highly successful and highly controversial psychometric tool. In professional terms, psychometric tools such as the MMPI transformed psychology and psychiatry. Psychometric instruments thus readily fit into the developmental history of psychology, psychiatry, and neurology; they were a significant part of the narrative of those fields' advances in understanding, intervening, and treating people with mental illnesses. At the same time, the advent of such tools also fits into a history of those disciplines that records the rise of obsessional observational and evaluative techniques and technologies in order to facilitate patterns of social control that became typical during the Progressive Era in the United States and after. It was those patterns that also nurtured the resistance to psychometrics that emerged during the Vietnam War and after.

Historical overview of computerized behavioral testing of humans in neurotoxicology.

Since the early 1970s, when they became more accessible, computers have been used increasingly for behavior measurement over a wide range of purposes, including the detection of neurotoxic effects. Over these relatively few years, the number of computerized tests in use in neurotoxicology has grown from one or two to around 16 major batteries. The development of computerized tests in neurotoxicology has been influenced by a number of drives or influences. Some of these influences have included the push for computerizing traditional paper-and-pencil tests, the moves to develop a standard or core test battery, the emphasis on culture-free tests, and on the pragmatic screening approach to test selection. Lately, there has been more emphasis on the development of tests with stability and reliability. These influences have made, and are still making, some impact on the directions of test and test battery construction. The nature and degree of impact will be discussed in the context of analyzing the development of computerized behavioral testing to its current state.

Test scores, measurement, and the use of analysis of variance: an historical overview.

In order to establish a firmer statistical foundation from which to draw inferences from factorial design study data, transformations of raw scores are occasionally employed in order to make their distributions more generally normal or to provide linearity. To date, few studies have been conducted to determine whether or not raw scores transformed or otherwise constitute measures for the purposes of statistical analysis. In this article, the historical development of the understanding of the term "measurement" by researchers in the social sciences is traced, and the development and use of One and Two-way ANOVA by researchers in the social sciences are presented and evaluated.

Historical view of the influences of measurement and reading theories on the assessment of reading.

The purpose of this study is to briefly explore the interactions among measurement theories, reading theories, and measurement practices from an historical perspective. The assessment of reading provides a useful framework for examining how theories influence, and in some cases fail to influence, the practice of reading assessment as operationalized in reading tests. The first section describes a conceptual framework for examining the assessment of reading. Next I describe the major research traditions in measurement theory that have dominated measurement practice during the 20th century. In the next section I briefly introduce major reading theories. Next, I bring together the previous two sections in order to examine the adequacy of the proposed conceptual framework for examining the assessment of reading. This section includes criticism of measurement theory by selected reading theorists. It also provides a brief history of the use of Rasch measurement theory to calibrate reading tests. Finally, the main points of the study are summarized and discussed. It should be recognized that this study represents a preliminary analysis of these issues.