Measuring Psychological Constructs: Advances in Model-Based Approaches

More than a half-century has passed since Cronbach's distinction between the correlational and experimental approaches in psychology. Yet measurement today is not much better integrated with psychological theory than it was in the late 1950s, and many argue that the traditional psychometric model itself may have introduced constraints that have limited the integration of measurement and theory.

Measuring Psychological Constructs seeks to break through these constraints by offering conceptual alternatives to traditional item-response theory's fixed-content/multiple-choice models. This edited volume's contributors present groundbreaking explanatory approaches to model-based measurement that provide various psychological constructs with more "authentic" measures such as constructed-response tasks and performance assessment. These new explanatory approaches not only extend rigorous psychometric methods to a variety of major psychological constructs, but also have the potential to change fundamentally the nature of the constructs that are being measured.

Grounded in psychometrics and quantitative assessment, and in the history and major theoretical approaches of psychology, Measuring Psychological Constructs is aimed at students, teachers, researchers, and practitioners alike, in variety of psychology subdisciplines that include developmental and geriatric, industrial/organizational, clinical and counseling, educational, social and personality, experimental, neuropsychology, health and rehabilitation, and quantitative psychology.

Contributors

Foreword

Preface

1. Measuring Psychological Constructs With Model-Based Approaches: An Introduction
   —Susan E. Embretson

I. Model-Based Approaches to Measuring Qualitative Differences Between Individuals

2. Mixture Distribution Item Response Theory, Latent Class Analysis, and Diagnostic Mixture Models
   —Matthias von Davier
3. Skills Diagnosis for Education and Psychology With IRT-based Parametric Latent Class Models
   —Louis A. Roussos, Louis V. DiBello, Robert A. Henson, Eunice Jang, and Jonathan L. Templin
4. Cognitive Psychometrics: Using Multinomial Processing Tree Models as Measurement Tools
   —William H. Batchelder

II. Model-Based Approaches to Isolating Entangled Constructs

5. Unidimensionality and Interpretability of Psychological Instruments
   —Jan-Eric Gustafsson and Lisbeth Åberg-Bengtsson
6. Using Item Response Theory to Disentangle Constructs at Different Levels of Generality
   —David Thissen and Lynne Steinberg

III. Model-Based Approaches for Measuring Personality, Psychopathology, and Attitudes From Self-Reports

7. Measuring Psychopathology With NonStandard Item Response Theory Models: Fitting the Four-Parameter Model to the Minnesota Mulitphasic Personality Inventory
   —Niels G. Waller and Steven P. Reise
8. MIXUM: An Unfolding Mixture Model to Explore the Latitude of Acceptance Concept in Attitude Measurement
   —James S. Roberts, Jürgen Rost, and George B. Macready

IV. Cognitive Psychometric Models for Interactive Item Generation

9. Recent Development and Prospects in Item Generation
   —Isaac I. Bejar
10. Modeling the Effect of Item Designs Within the Rasch Model
    —Rianne Janssen
11. Cognitive Design Systems: A Structural Modeling Approach Applied to Developing a Spatial Ability Test
    —Susan E. Embretson

Index

About the Editor

Susan E. Embretson, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She received her doctoral degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1973 and was a professor at the University of Kansas from 1974 until 2004.

Dr. Embretson's research focuses on modern psychometric methods, particularly on the integration of cognitive theory into psychometric models and test design. Most recently, she has been exploring how test items can be automatically generated by artificial intelligence to target levels and cognitive sources of difficulty to optimally measure each individual examinee during testing; the measurement areas have included fluid reasoning, spatial ability, mathematical reasoning, and verbal comprehension.

Dr. Embretson was awarded the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association's (APA's) Division of Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics in 2001, and the Technical and Scientific Contribution Award from the National Council on Measurement in Education during 1994 to 1996. She also received the Palmer O. Johnson award (with Ken Doyle) from the American Educational Research Association in 1976.

She has served as president of APA's Division of Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics (1990–1991), the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology (1997–1998), and the Psychometric Society (1998–1999).