Today psychometrics plays an increasingly important role in all of our lives as testing and assessment occurs from preschool until retirement. This book introduces the reader to all aspects of the subject, ranging from its early history, school examinations, how to construct your own test, controversies about IQ and recent developments in internet testing.

John Rust is Director of The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge and a Senior Member of Darwin College. Susan Golombok is Professor of Family Research at the University of Cambridge, Director of the Centre for Family Research and a Fellow of Newnham College.

List of Figures and Tables	p. ix
Preface to the Third Edition	p. xi
Acknowledgement	p. xiii

The development of psychometrics	p. 3
Psychometrics today	p. 5
The history of psychometrics	p. 5
Issues in intelligence testing	p. 12
The ethics of IQ testing	p. 22
Summary	p. 25
The objectives of testing and assessment	p. 27
Psychometrics and sociobiology	p. 28
Is psychometrics a science?	p. 30
What does psychometrics measure?	p. 31
The theory of true scores	p. 34
The true psychometrics: trait or function?	p. 36
Summary	p. 42
The process of test construction	p. 43
Knowledge-based and person-based questionnaires	p. 44
Objective and open-ended tests	p. 45
Norm-referenced and criterion-referenced testing	p. 47
Obtaining test scores by summing item scores	p. 50
The correction for guessing in objective knowledge-based tests	p. 51
Summary	p. 53
Item analysis	p. 55
Classical item analysis statistics for knowledge-based tests	p. 56
Classical item analysis for person-based tests	p. 59
Item analysis in criterion-referenced testing	p. 60
Psychological traits, true scores and internal test structure	p. 61
Classical item analysis for more complex situations	p. 61
Summary	p. 69
Characteristics of tests	p. 71
Reliability	p. 72
Validity	p. 78
Standardisation	p. 81
Normalisation	p. 85
Summary	p. 88
Bias in testing and assessment	p. 89
Bias and fairness	p. 90
Forms of bias	p. 91
Item bias	p. 92
Intrinsic test bias	p. 97
Extrinsic test bias	p. 101
Summary	p. 103
Factor analysis	p. 105
The correlation coefficient	p. 106
The application of factor analysis to test construction	p. 112
Criticisms of the classical factor analytic approach	p. 117
Special uses of factor analysis in test construction	p. 119
Summary	p. 120
Using psychometrics in educational settings	p. 121
Questioning the examination system	p. 122
Measuring ability in schoolchildren	p. 128
Measuring achievement in schoolchildren	p. 130
Ability-achievement discrepancy analysis	p. 132
Summary	p. 137
Personality theory and clinical assessment	p. 139
Definitions of personality	p. 141
Genetic vs. environmental influences on personality	p. 142
Theories of personality	p. 144
Types vs. traits	p. 150
Approaches to personality assessment	p. 151
Sources and management of sabotage	p. 156
Informal methods of personality assessment	p. 159
State vs. trait measures	p. 160
Ipsative scaling	p. 160
Spurious validity and the Barnum effect	p. 161
Assessment in clinical psychology	p. 162
Summary	p. 163
Psychometric assessment of personality in occupational settings	p. 165
The Big Five model	p. 166
Orpheus: a work-based personality questionnaire that assesses the Big Five	p. 167
The Orpheus scales	p. 175
The psychometric characteristics of Orpheus	p. 178
Using Orpheus	p. 179
Summary	p. 181
Ethical test use and integrity testing	p. 183
Administrative procedures for psychometric testing	p. 184
Integrity testing	p. 187
Theories of integrity	p. 191
Giotto: a psychometric test of integrity	p. 192
Summary	p. 195
Psychometrics in the information technology age	p. 197
Computerisation	p. 198
Artificial intelligence	p. 203
Summary	p. 208

Constructing your own questionnaire	p. 211
The purpose of the questionnaire	p. 212
Making a blueprint	p. 212
Writing items	p. 217
Designing the questionnaire	p. 221
Piloting the questionnaire	p. 224
Item analysis	p. 225
Reliability	p. 228
Validity	p. 230
Standardisation	p. 232
Bibliography	p. 235
Index	p. 249
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.