Principles and Methods of Test Construction: Standards and Recent Advances (Psychological Assessment Science and Practice)

This latest volume in the series Psychological Assessment – Science and Practice describes the current state-of-the-art in test development and construction. The past 10–20 years have seen substantial advances in the methods used to develop and administer tests. In this volume many of the world’s leading authorities collate these advances and provide information about current practices, thus equipping researchers and students to successfully construct instruments using the latest standards and techniques. The volume is organized into five related sections. The first explains the benefits of considering the underlying theory when designing tests, with a focus on factor analysis and item response theory in construction. The second section looks at item format and test presentation. The third discusses model testing and selection, while the fourth goes into statistical methods to identify group-specific biases. The final section discusses current topics of special relevance, such as multi-trait multi-state analyses and development of screening instruments.

Karl Schweizer, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Freiburg and was a faculty member there and at the University of Tübingen.His research interests focus on assessment, cognitive-differential psychology, psychological statistics, and research methods. He has served on the Executive Committee of the European Association of Psychological Assessment and was editor of European Journal of Psychological Assessment.Christine DiStefano, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Educational Measurement in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests are in validity, survey construction, structural equation modeling with categorical data, and classification.