ERIC Number: EJ1104572
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 3
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0969-594X
EISSN: N/A
The Controversy of Consequences
Twing, Jon S.
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, v23 n2 p296-298 2016
This special issue of "Assessment in Education" contains the type of debate needed about what Cizek (2015) calls a "… lingering flaw in the concept of validity…." Some practitioners might not agree that the current theory of validation is flawed. Specifically, the debate Jon Twing is referencing concerns the role of the consequences associated with test use in the validation of test instruments. Twing comments that the debate clearly precedes this special issue; in fact, validity and the consequences of test use has long been an area of controversy among experts in the field, and claims this debate is at the heart of a fundamental mistake in the conceptualisation of validation theory that practitioners struggle with--namely the types of evidence required to justify score inferences and those needed to defend test use. Twing writes that he does not believe the fundamental problem is definitional, but more procedural, relative to the mixing of evidence needed for both score interpretation and test use. If anything, an operational definition might be needed to clarify and illuminate the meaning.
Descriptors: Test Validity, Misconceptions, Evidence, Scores, Inferences, Data Interpretation, Definitions, Psychometrics, Test Theory
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
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