Explores the interactions among measurement theories, reading theories, and measurement practices from a historical perspective. Describes a conceptual framework for examining the assessment of reading and reviews major research traditions in measurement theory in the 20th century. Also provides a brief history of the Rasch measurement theory in…

Examined the Type I error rate and the power of the Stout T procedure (DIMTEST) (W. Stout, 19987, 1990) and the Holland-Rosenbaum procedure (P. Holland and P. Rosenbaum, 1986) for normal and nonnormal data sets through a Monte Carlo study. Both procedures performed adequately under some conditions, but the Stout T procedure showed adequate power…

Tested the metric properties of a Spanish version of the Assessment of Growth Hormone Deficiency in Adults (AGHDA) questionnaire through Rasch analysis with a sample of 356 adult patients in Spain. Results suggest that the Spanish AGHDA could be a useful complement of the clinical evaluation of growth hormone deficiency patients at group and…

Examined the role that gender differences play in the determination of the components influencing the difficulty of spatial ability items. Results for 2,245 examinees taking a spatial ability test that is part of the Dental School Admission Battery show that component difficulties show little variation across gender. (SLD)

Describes the Rasch measurement partial credit model, what it is, how it differs from other Rasch models, and when and how to use it. Also describes the calibration of instruments with increasingly complex items. Explains pivot anchoring and illustrates its use and describes the effect of pivot anchoring on step calibrations, item hierarchy, and…

Used the Rasch measurement model to explore the construct of a general motor ability in 332 5- and 6-year-old Australian children performing 24 motor skills. After categorizing data, two different, unidimensional scales were created, one for boys and one for girls. (SLD)

Evaluated the alternate forms reliability of new versus old tasks of the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS) (A. Fisher, 1993). Participants were 44 persons from the AMPS database. Results support good alternate forms reliability of the motor and process ability measures and suggest that the newly calibrated tasks can be used reliably in…

Validated the Motivation Orientation scales of the Inventory of School Motivation (ISM) (M. Maher, 1984) across Navajo (n=760) and Anglo (n=1,012) students. Findings show that even though the ISM motivation orientation scales are applicable to students of different cultural backgrounds, meaningful cross-cultural comparisons should use the 30 items…

Compared scores assigned to college placement essays by a computer program with the evaluations of human readers for just under 1,300 essays. Results show high agreement between computer and human scores, and both human and machine readers tended to give higher scores for analytic and practical themes and lower scores for those involving emotions.…

Explored the measurement issues in a two-stage evaluation for an outstanding faculty award. Thirty college teachers were rated by 293 students using a newly developed inventory. Items fit a Rasch model fairly well, and the separation reliability for the teachers was high. A cut score was established, and a short version was developed. (SLD)

Discusses the limitations and methodological weaknesses of most popular standard setting models and presents a radically different approach to the question of setting standards, the Objective Standard Setting Model, based on the Rasch model. Also makes suggestions for new considerations of validity in standard setting. (SLD)

Studied the psychometric structure of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI) (J. Mahalik, 2000) in relation to the Rasch model. Results for 348 men across all 12 scales show excellent congruence between the theoretically derived construct of conformity to masculine norms and the theoretically defined objectives of the Rasch rating…

Reexamined the standard scoring structure of the revised Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) Social Introversion Scale with Rasch measurement using data from 2,600 nonpsychiatric subjects from the restandardization sample. Discusses how to use Rasch measurement to understand and improve personality measurement. (SLD)

Applied a procedure to assess measurement invariance across cultures developed by J. Steenkamp and H. Baumgartner (1998) to a scale to measure cognitive age using data collected in India (n=195), China (n=250), and Korea (n=251). Results from confirmatory factor analyses indicate that the technique provides a valuable tool to assess measurement…

Describes a class of rater effects, differential rater functioning over time (DRIFT), that depicts rater-by-time interactions. Also describes Rasch measurement procedures designed to identify these types of DRIFT in rating data. Applied these procedures to simulated data to show their usefulness in classifying raters as aberrant or non-aberrant…