Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix
Preface to the Third Edition xi
Acknowledgement xiii
Part 1
1 The development of psychometrics 3
Psychometrics today 5
The history of psychometrics 5
Issues in intelligence testing 12
The ethics of IQ testing 22
Summary 25
2 The objectives of testing and assessment 27
Psychometrics and sociobiology 28
Is psychometrics a science? 30
What does psychometrics measure? 31
The theory of true scores 34
The true psychometrics: trait or function? 36
Summary 42
3 The process of test construction 43
Knowledge-based and person-based questionnaires 44
Objective and open-ended tests 45
Norm-referenced and criterion-referenced testing 47
Obtaining test scores by summing item scores 50
The correction for guessing in objective knowledge-based tests 53
Summary 53
4 Item analysis 55
Classical item analysis statistics for knowledge-based tests 56
Classical item analysis for person-based tests 59
Item analysis in criterion-referenced testing 60
Psychological traits, true scores and internal test structure 61
Summary 69
5 Characteristics of tests 71
Reliability 72
Validity 78
Standardisation 81
Normalisation 85
Summary 88
6 Bias in testing and assessment 89
Bias and fairness 90
Forms of bias 91
Item bias 92
Intrinsic test bias 97
Extrinsic test bias 101
Summary 103
7 Factor analysis 105
The correlation coefficient 112
The application of factor analysis to test construction 106
Criticisms of the classical factor analytic approach 117
Special uses of facto analysis in test construction 119
Summary 120
8 Using psychometrics in educational settings 121
Questioning the examinationsystem 122
Measuring ability in schoolchildren 128
Measuring achievement in schoolchildren 130
Ability-achievement discrepancy analysis 132
Summary 137
9 Personality theory and clinical assessment 139
Definitions of personality 141
Genetic vs. environmental influences on personality 142
Theories of personality 144
Types vs. traits 150
Approaches to personality assessment 151
Sources and management of sabotage 156
Informal methods of personality assessment 159
State vs. trait measures 160
Ipsative scaling 160
Spurious validity and the Barnum effect 161
Assessment in clinical psychology 162
Summary 163
10 Psychometric assessment of personality in occupational settings 165
The Big Five model 166
Orpheus: a work-based personality questionnaire that assesses the Big Five 167
The Orpheus scales 175
The psychometric characteristics of Orpheus 178
Using Orpheus 179
Summary 181
11 Ethical test use and integrity testing 183
Administrative procedures for psychometric testing 184
Integrity testing 187
Theories of integrity 191
Giotto: a psychometric test of integrity 192
Summary 195
12 Psychometrics in the information technology age 197
Computerisation 198
Artificial intelligence 203
Summary 208
Part 2
13 Constructing your own questionnaire 211
The purpose of the questionnaire 212
Making a blueprint 212
Writing items 227
Designing the questionnaire 221
Piloting the questionnaire 224
Item analysis 225
Reliability 228
Validity 230
Standardisation 232
Bibliography 235
Index 249
