Preface

In the late 1970s, when work fi rst began on our introductory measurement text, there were only a few textbooks available on the subject of measurement in psychology. All of these books provided students with a basic grounding in psychometrics, but in our opinion none of them did a very satisfactory job of it. More specifi cally, these books all had a variety of shortcomings that really needed to addressed.

Problems with the Available Measurement Textbooks

From our perspective, the available measurement textbooks had many problems:

■ Reading those books was a challenge. The books seemed to us to be written for instructors to teach from. By contrast, we believed that such books should be written for students to learn from.

■ The authors of competing books had little or no actual experience in test administration and test interpretation. The writing in the existing books was academic enough. However, the writing betrayed a total lack of any "hands-on," working knowledge of the subject matter. One might read the entire text, cover to cover, and never fi nd a shred of evidence that the writer had ever administered a psychological test, personally interpreted fi ndings from a test, or dealt face-to-face with an assessee (or any other interested party).

■ Coverage of certain key subject areas was nonexistent. Today it`s commonplace to cover topics such as legal/ethical issues in assessment, forensic assessment, neuropsychological assessment, and psychological assessment in business. But back in those days, any coverage of these topics in the existing measurement books was the exception rather than the rule. Cohen et al. pioneered such coverage, and Cohen et al. continued to lead the way in standard-setting coverage in other areas such as culture-related issues in assessment. As late as the previous (seventh) edition of our text, we introduced a chapter on the subject of test utility—this at a time when most other competing textbooks did not even list the terms utility or test utility in their subject index.

■ The other books contained way too much description of tests. Granted, a book on the subject of testing must contain a description of some tests. However, back then, portions of existing texts were as replete with descriptions of tests as Tests in Print.

■ The art program in those books did not adequately support what was written. What passed for an art program in the books that existed at the time was some number intensive graphs and tables, as well as some photos of test materials. Photos seemed to be inserted more to break up text than to complement it. By contrast, we believed that supplemental art could be effectively used to reinforce learning. More specifically, it could be used to stimulate the reader`s imagination and help solidify meaningful visual associations to the text.

■ Coverage of the heritage and history of the assessment enterprise was scant. In the books that existed prior to the publication of our own, little or no effort was made to convey a sense of how all of the facts being presented fi t within the grand scheme or context of the subject matter. Tests of intelligence were presented with little or no discussion of what was meant by intelligence. Tests of personality were presented with little or no discussion of what was meant by personality. By contrast, we would make an effort to place such material not only in a historical context, but in a logical context. Our appreciation for the importance of history and context is emphasized by the fact that the fi rst feature readers are greeted by as they open our book—as well as the last feature they may see before closing it— is a listing of noteworthy historical landmarks set within the front and back covers of our book.

■ Books existing at the time made implicit assumptions—not true in all cases—about the level of preparation students had coming in to a measurement course. All of the measurement textbooks that came before Cohen et al. were written based on the assumption that every student taking the course was up to speed on all of the statistical concepts that would be necessary to build on learning about psychometrics. In theory, at least, there was no reason not to assume this; statistics was a prerequisite to taking testing. In practice, a different picture emerged. It was simply not the case that all students were adequately and equally prepared to begin learning statistics-based measurement concepts. Our remedy for this problem was to include a "Statistics Refresher" chapter early on, just prior to building on students` statistics-based knowledge. ……