Assessment, Statistics, and Research

  Factor Analysis and Assessment In testing, factor analysis is a mathematical strategy to analyze groups of items within a large test to see how well they relate to each other. The goal will be to reduce the large number of items to a set of factors that appear to measure different but related constructs; hence, factor analysis is a method of data reduction. (Sutton, 2020) A large test of various abilities may be analyzed for ways to group different abilities. Short tests of vocabulary, verbal analogies, and synonyms might form a factor that a researcher could label as "Verbal Abilities." A factor is a group of variables that are highly correlated with each other and, although different, they appear to have something in common. Researchers choose names for groups of variables based on the content of the variables in the factor. In large research projects, each participant may have scores on a large number of variables. Factor analysis can be used to identify patterns amo...

  What makes a test valid? is a tricky question.  The short, and rather obnoxious response is, “nothing.”  Like reliability , validity is a property of test scores  rather than tests but more accurately, an interpretation of the scores. But it is important to take the question seriously when test-takers and users are wondering how much confidence to place in a test score. As with many aspects of science, the answers can be simply stated but there is a complicated backstory. Validity Traditions For many, the traditional views of test score validity will be sufficient. Tests measure constructs. Scientific constructs are ideas that have features that can be measured like reading comprehension, dominance, short-term memory, and verbal intelligence. Construct validity is not a single entity but rather the current state of knowledge about how a test instrument’s scores have functioned in many settings and in relation to crite...