Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing is the fifth in a series of publications dating from 1954 ( American Educational Research Association et al., 1954 ) setting forth requirements for excellence in developing, documenting research on, reporting, and using psychological and educational tests. Each was developed by representatives of three organizations concerned with testing: the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education. The 1999 revision ( American Educational Research Association et al., 1999 ), like the previous versions, provides technical standards for developing and evaluating tests. These include rules of good practice, information to appear in manuals for test users, and requirements for scaling or equating scores. They have also offered more than rules. They have defined and codified key concepts and principles, such as (1) the nature of validity and the various aspects and types of evidence required for inferring it; (2) concepts of reliability and measurement error; and (3) problems of equivalence across different forms of a test. The 1999 version also addresses standards of effective test use in various settings – using tests with linguistic minorities and people with handicapping conditions, administering and scoring tests and reporting results, and ... log in or subscribe to read full text