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Toward More Sensible Achievement Measurement: A Retrospective

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Alternative Approaches to the Assessment of Achievement

Part of the book series: Evaluation in Education and Human Services ((EEHS,volume 16))

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Abstract

As a graduate student some twenty years ago, I carried Gulliksen’s Theory of Mental Tests (1950) around with me like a bible; I nearly had it committed to memory before my comprehensive examinations. Yet I always had an uneasy feeling that despite its elegance, there was something off about classical test theory as a theory of measurement. When I stumbled occasionally upon alternatives like Guttman scaling and Loevinger’s homogeneity analysis, something clicked; I resonated to the underlying implications of these approaches to measurement. But they were rather obscure procedures, and, although others claimed otherwise, I could never produce very scalable sets of items. So I carried on business as usual — even to this very day, I can’t resist the urge to calculate KR20 whenever I am presented with a body of test data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Student Testing, Evaluation and Standards, Graduate School of Education, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, USA

    David L. McArthur PhD

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  1. David L. McArthur PhD
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Student Testing, Evaluation and Standards, Graduate School of Education, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, USA

    David L. McArthur PhD

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© 1987 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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McArthur, D.L. (1987). Toward More Sensible Achievement Measurement: A Retrospective. In: McArthur, D.L. (eds) Alternative Approaches to the Assessment of Achievement. Evaluation in Education and Human Services, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3257-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3257-9_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7961-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3257-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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