Naomi Gafni, director of Research and Development, National Institute for Testing and Evaluation, Jerusalem, Israel, has devoted a substantial part of her career to the development of admissions tests and other educational tests and to the investigation of their validity. As such she is keenly aware of the complexities involved in this process.…

The term "validity" is one of the most important and one of the most debated concepts in educational measurement. In this paper, I argue that various different approaches can all be viewed from an associational perspective. I also argue that our understanding will be enhanced by adopting some basic ideas of scientific reasoning to the…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of "baseline studies" in investigations of test impact and to illustrate the type of thinking underlying the design and implementation of such studies by reference to a recent study relating to a high-stakes test of English language proficiency. Baseline studies are used to describe an…