| Abstract: | Educational assessment concerns inference about students' knowledge, skills, and accomplishments. Because data are never so comprehensive and unequivocal as to ensure certitude, test theory evolved in part to address questions of weight, coverage, and import of data. The resulting concepts and techniques can be viewed as applications of more general principles for inference in the presence of uncertainty. Issues of evidence and inference in educational assessment are discussed from this perspective.Probability isn't really about numbers; it's about the structure of reasoning.Presidential address to the Psychometric Society, presented June 25, 1994, in Champaign, Illinois.Supported by (1) Contract No. N00014-91-J-4101, R&T 4421573-01, from the Cognitive Science Program, Cognitive and Neural Sciences Division, Office of Naval Research, (2) the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, Student Testing (CRESST), Educational Research and Development Program, cooperative agreement number R117G10027 and CFDA catalog number 84.117G, as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, and (3) the Statistical and Psychometric Research Division of Educational Testing Service. I am grateful for comments and suggestions from Henry Braun, Drew Gitomer, Richard Patz, Jonathan Troper, and Howard Wainer. |
