Are Sum Scores a Great Accomplishment of Psychometrics or Intuitive Test Theory?

Mislevy, Robert J.

doi:10.1007/s11336-024-10003-8

Psychometrika

2024

DOI: 10.1007/s11336-024-10003-8

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Are Sum Scores a Great Accomplishment of Psychometrics or Intuitive Test Theory?

Robert J. Mislevy

Abstract: Sijtsma, Ellis, and Borsboom (Psychometrika, 89:84-117, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-024-09964-7 ) provide a thoughtful treatment in Psychometrika of the value and properties of sum scores and classical test theory at a depth at which few practicing psychometricians are familiar. In this note, I offer comments on their article from the perspective of evidentiary reasoning.

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

Sijtsma,

Ellis,

Borsboom

2024

Psychometrika

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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.

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

Sijtsma,

Ellis,

Borsboom

2024

Psychometrika

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scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

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Are Sum Scores a Great Accomplishment of Psychometrics or Intuitive Test Theory?

Cited by 1 publication

References 9 publications

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

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

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