Towards an Alignment of Engineering and Psychometric Approaches to Uncertainty in Measurement: Consequences for the Future

Abstract

The International Vocabulary of Measurement (VIM) and the Guide to Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM) shift the terms and concepts of measurement information quality away from an Error Approach toward a model-based Uncertainty Approach. An analogous shift has taken place in psychometrics with the decreasing use of True Score Theory and increasing attention to probabilistic models for unidimensional measurement. These corresponding shifts emerge from shared roots in cognitive processes common across the sciences and they point toward new opportunities for an art and science of living complex adaptive systems. The psychology of model-based reasoning sets the stage for not just a new consensus on measurement and uncertainty, and not just for a new valuation of the scientific status of psychology and the social sciences, but for an appreciation of how to harness the energy of self-organizing processes in ways that harmonize human relationships.