Representational measurement theory: Is its number up?

Michell, Joel

doi:10.1177/0959354320930817

Cited by 24 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…As such, while I do not raise these questions to 'take down' educational assessment as a general practice, the interpretations-which typically stem from political discourse and pop-psychology-of what exactly these assessments say about a general population are highly suspect to say the least (e.g., in terms of a population being 'smarter', this school is 'better', some country is 'uneducated') and it is doubtful whether many psychometricians, when this challenge is pointed out, would endorse these claims of cross-context comparability. While this paper must leave the raised questions open, a recent full review [65] has unpacked a number of these issues with rigorous care.…”

Section: Pathology In Contemporary Educational Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Educational Assessment Theory: A High-Level Discussion of Adolphe Quetelet, Platonism, and Ergodicity

Bloniasz

2021

Philosophies

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Educational assessments, specifically standardized and normalized exams, owe most of their foundations to psychological test theory in psychometrics. While the theoretical assumptions of these practices are widespread and relatively uncontroversial in the testing community, there are at least two that are philosophically and mathematically suspect and have troubling implications in education. Assumption 1 is that repeated assessment measures that are calculated into an arithmetic mean are thought to represent some real stable, quantitative psychological trait or ability plus some error. Assumption 2 is that aggregated, group-level educational data collected from assessments can then be interpreted to make inferences about a given individual person over time without explicit justification. It is argued that the former assumption cannot be taken for granted; it is also argued that, while it is typically attributed to 20th century thought, the assumption in a rigorous form can be traced back at least to the 1830s via an unattractive Platonistic statistical thesis offered by one of the founders of the social sciences—Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874). While contemporary research has moved away from using his work directly, it is demonstrated that cognitive psychology is still facing the preservation of assumption 1, which is becoming increasingly challenged by current paradigms that pitch human cognition as a dynamical, complex system. However, how to deal with assumption 1 and whether it is broadly justified is left as an open question. It is then argued that assumption 2 is only justified by assessments having ergodic properties, which is a criterion rarely met in education; specifically, some forms of normalized standardized exams are intrinsically non-ergodic and should be thought of as invalid assessments for saying much about individual students and their capability. The article closes with a call for the introduction of dynamical mathematics into educational assessment at a conceptual level (e.g., through Bayesian networks), the critical analysis of several key psychological testing assumptions, and the introduction of dynamical language into philosophical discourse. Each of these prima facie distinct areas ought to inform each other more closely in educational studies.

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Section: Pathology In Contemporary Educational Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Educational Assessment Theory: A High-Level Discussion of Adolphe Quetelet, Platonism, and Ergodicity

Bloniasz

2021

Philosophies

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“…Some argue that RTM is useful for measurement (Baccelli, 2020;Heilmann, 2015), others argue that it may be redundant in some contexts (Angner, 2011). Some argue that RTM may have formal merits but that it is useless for the practical execution of measurement (Mari et al, 2017;Reiss, 2008), still others say that RTM fails as an approach to measurement and should be replaced by something else (Michell, 2005(Michell, , 2020. Clearly, RTM is not the kind shared background one can lean on when debating and improving measurement practices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As an example, consider the literature on RTM. Some people argue that RTM is useful for measurement (Cartwright et al, 2016;Heilmann, 2015), others argue that it is untenable or useless (Michell, 1997(Michell, , 2020. This looks like a genuine controversy (as opposed to a terminological one), and some authors treat it as such.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representation in measurement

Vessonen

2021

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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The Representational Theory of Measurement (RTM) is the best known account of the kind of representation measurement requires. However, RTM has been challenged from various angles, with critics claiming e.g. that RTM fails to account for actual measurement practice and that it is ambiguous about the nature of measurable attributes. In this paper I use the critical literature on RTM to formulate Representation Minimalism – a characterization of what measurement-relevant representation requires at the minimum. I argue that Representation Minimalism avoids the main problems with RTM while acknowledging its usefulness as the formal foundation of representation in measurement.

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“… 65. I have traced various episodes in the history of psychometrics from this perspective (e.g., Michell, 1997, 2009a, 2012, 2013, 2020b, 2021). …”

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confidence: 99%

“… 5. For more on the concept of measurement and its corruption in psychology see Michell (1997, 1999, 2021). …”

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confidence: 99%

“The art of imposing measurement upon the mind”: Sir Francis Galton and the genesis of the psychometric paradigm

Michell

2021

Theory & Psychology

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Sir Francis Galton singlehandedly instigated the navigational settings for the discipline of psychometrics by presupposing that mental attributes are measurable. In turn, this presupposition became the defining pillar of the psychometric paradigm. There were no scientifically sound reasons for adopting this presupposition and those Galton gave beg the question every time. So, what drove him to endorse this presupposition? Two considerations steered him in this direction: first, his Pythagorean philosophy of science according to which measurement is a necessary feature; and second, his desire to present eugenics as a science, which, given his Pythagorean vision, entailed that eugenics must involve measurement of relevant mental attributes. The quantitative presupposition guiding psychometrics throughout its history was, therefore, a spin-off from Galton’s marketing strategy for the pseudoscience of eugenics.

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Representational measurement theory: Is its number up?

Cited by 24 publications

References 64 publications

On Educational Assessment Theory: A High-Level Discussion of Adolphe Quetelet, Platonism, and Ergodicity

On Educational Assessment Theory: A High-Level Discussion of Adolphe Quetelet, Platonism, and Ergodicity

Representation in measurement

“The art of imposing measurement upon the mind”: Sir Francis Galton and the genesis of the psychometric paradigm

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