Rejoinder to McNeish and Mislevy: What Does Psychological Measurement Require?

Klaas Sijtsma (), Jules L. Ellis and Denny Borsboom
Additional contact information
Klaas Sijtsma: Tilburg University
Jules L. Ellis: Open University of The Netherlands
Denny Borsboom: University of Amsterdam

Psychometrika, 2024, vol. 89, issue 4, No 5, 1175-1185

Abstract: Abstract In this rejoinder to McNeish (2024) and Mislevy (2024), who both responded to our focus article on the merits of the simple sum score (Sijtsma et al., 2024), we address several issues. Psychometrics education and in particular psychometricians’ outreach may help researchers to use IRT models as a precursor for the responsible use of the latent variable score and the sum score. Different methods used for test and questionnaire construction often do not produce highly different results, and when they do, this may be due to an unarticulated attribute theory generating noisy data. The sum score and transformations thereof, such as normalized test scores and percentiles, may help test practitioners and their clients to better communicate results. Latent variables prove important in more advanced applications such as equating and adaptive testing where they serve as technical tools rather than communication devices. Decisions based on test results are often binary or use a rather coarse ordering of scale levels, hence, do not require a high level of granularity (but nevertheless need to be precise). A gap exists between psychology and psychometrics which is growing deeper and wider, and that needs to be bridged. Psychology and psychometrics must work together to attain this goal.

Keywords: classical test theory; factor analysis; item response theory; latent variable; sum score; theory development in psychology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11336-024-10004-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:psycho:v:89:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1007_s11336-024-10004-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... gy/journal/11336/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11336-024-10004-7

Access Statistics for this article

Psychometrika is currently edited by Irini Moustaki

More articles in Psychometrika from Springer, The Psychometric Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().