{"id":736,"date":"2017-01-25T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/?p=736"},"modified":"2017-01-26T17:30:16","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T17:30:16","slug":"what-is-a-psychometrician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/25\/what-is-a-psychometrician\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Psychometrician?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A psychometrician<\/em><\/strong> is a professional who practices the science of measurement, or psychometrics<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Psychometrics<\/em><\/strong> is the field of science associated with the development of instruments (such as examinations) that measure knowledge, skills and attributes (KSAs).\u00a0 A psychometrician develops assessments such as examinations for educational, employment or professional credentialing purposes.\u00a0 From the Greek root word psych<\/em> which means mind and metr<\/em> which means measure, psychometrician<\/em><\/strong> is just what it sounds like — a person who measures what is in someone\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

Certification and licensing bodies that develop assessments for professional credentials employ a psychometrician (or outsource to a psychometrician) to make sure that they are developing examinations that are fair and valid.\u00a0 After all, it is important to be sure that any certification or licensing body using an examination to verify competence is certain that the examination really is measuring knowledge and skills required for competent performance.\u00a0 Consider a multiple choice test question that could have a hidden bias in the way the question is worded thus affecting a candidate\u2019s ability to accurately respond to the question.\u00a0 Or an essay question that is in fact assessing reading or writing skills instead of knowledge of the concept the essay question is asking.\u00a0 These are the types of careful considerations that psychometricians evaluate to ensure a quality, fair, valid and reliable examination process.<\/p>\n

Someone with the title of psychometrician might work in any area of testing.\u00a0 For example, a psychometrician might spend most of his or her time overseeing an examination program.\u00a0 This could include facilitating a job\/task analysis, managing the item writing process, and conducting standard setting (or passing score) studies.\u00a0 A psychometrician might also spend considerable time conducting data analyses.\u00a0 He or she might score exams, run item analyses, produce score reports, and conduct reliability and validity studies.<\/p>\n

Typically, a psychometrician has an advanced graduate degree from a university, usually either from an Educational Measurement program, from an Industrial Organization program or from a Quantitative Psychology program.\u00a0 Master\u2019s and PhD programs in measurement can be found in colleges of education, psychology and occasionally statistics. Holding advanced studies from a university helps psychometricians understand the complexities associated with developing good examinations.\u00a0 However, there is no certification or license that a person has to complete or hold in order to become a psychometrician.\u00a0 A person working in any area of testing could simply choose to call himself or herself a psychometrician.<\/p>\n

Psychometricians often focus on a few areas of expertise.\u00a0 Very few psychometricians have expertise in all of the areas of specialization associated with measurement.\u00a0 Some psychometricians spend a lot of time working with subject matter experts (SMEs) facilitating meetings and serving as project directors and liaisons with certification and licensing bodies.\u00a0 Other psychometricians choose to stay in the background working with the data or the test questions and limiting their interaction with certification and licensing bodies.\u00a0 Some psychometricians are experts at defining the knowledge and skills required for competence (such as in a job\/task analysis) while others are experts at establishing the passing standard.\u00a0 Some psychometricians are experts at reviewing statistics for purposes of cheat detection, while others might be experts at the statistics associated with developing adaptive examinations.\u00a0 When determining the psychometric expertise required to produce quality examinations, certification and licensing bodies should consider these expertise variations, among others.<\/p>\n

It would be difficult to find one psychometrician with expertise in all areas associated with assessment and measurement.\u00a0 Therefore many certification and licensing bodies outsource their measurement to a psychometric firm.\u00a0 Certification programs may benefit from working with a testing company with a staff of psychometricians in a number of different areas of expertise.\u00a0 This will allow for the adjustment of psychometric expertise as the examination and the program evolves.\u00a0 Changes to the examination life-cycle will affect many other decisions of a psychometric nature and certification and licensure programs committed to producing quality assessments will benefit from finding the right psychometric talent to partner with throughout the life of their examinations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A psychometrician is a professional who practices the science of measurement, or psychometrics.\u00a0 Psychometrics is the field of science associated with the development of instruments (such as examinations) that measure knowledge, skills and attributes (KSAs).\u00a0 A psychometrician develops assessments such as examinations for educational, employment or professional credentialing purposes.\u00a0 From the Greek root word psych… View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[92,91,27],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-experts","tag-psychometrician","tag-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":741,"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proftesting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}