Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This chapter reviews the historical roots of ETS from two perspectives. First, the requirements and history of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) governing the establishment and operation of 501(c)3 organizations are described. Next, the people and events leading to the establishment of ETS as a nonprofit educational measurement organization are explored, with particular attention to the role of research. Finally, the principles underlying Section 501(c)3 and those of ETS’s progenitors are brought together to suggest what it means to be a nonprofit educational measurement organization in the twenty-first century.

This chapter summarizes ETS contributions concerning the development and application of item analysis procedures. The focus is on dichotomously scored items, which allows for a simplified presentation that is consistent with the focus of the original developments and which has straightforward application to polytomously scored items.

This chapter reviews ETS psychometric contributions with a focus on test scores. One section addresses contributions based on assessing test scores’ measurement characteristics. A second section describes contributions oriented toward using test scores as predictors in correlational and regression relationships. Contributions that integrate test scores’ measurement aspects with correlational and regression uses are also reviewed.

This chapter documents ETS advances in score linking theory and practice. As a prelude, we provide a motivation for the considerable extent of research on score linking. Then we summarize published efforts that provide conceptual frameworks for score linking or examples of scale aligning. Next we deal with data collection designs and data preparation issues. Third, we turn our focus to the various procedures that have been developed to link or equate scores. This treatment is followed by a review of research describing processes for evaluating the quality of equating results. Fourth, we review studies that focus on comparing different linking methods. A brief chronological summary of the material covered in preceding parts of the chapter is then provided. The penultimate section summarizes the various books and chapters that ETS authors have contributed on the topic. An extensive list of citations spanning from 1950 to 2015 can be found just after our closing comments.

Few would doubt that researchers at ETS have contributed more to the general topic of item response theory (IRT) than individuals from any other institution. In this chapter, we review most of those contributions, dividing them into sections by decades of publication. The history of IRT begins before the seminal volume by Lord and Novick (, Addison-Wesley, Reading, 1968) and ETS researchers were central contributors to those developments, beginning with early work by Fred Lord and Bert Green in the 1950s. The chapter traces a wide range of contributions through the decades, ending with recent work that produced models involving complex latent variable structures and multiple dimensions.

Since ETS’s founding in 1947, staff members have made important contributions to both theoretical and applied statistics, especially in the areas of linear models, latent regression, Bayesian statistics and causal inference. Although much of this work was inspired by challenges arising in the course of operational activities, the developments often had broader implications, not only for the testing industry as a whole but also for general statistical practice. This chapter offers a comprehensive historical account of statistical research at ETS, with particular emphasis on those topics that are not covered in other chapters.

ETS has been a leader in the development of quantitative procedures for fairness assessment, and its efforts are reviewed in this chapter. The first section deals with differential prediction and differential validity procedures that examine whether test scores predict a criterion, such as performance in college, across different subgroups in a similar manner. The second section, constituting the bulk of the chapter, focuses on item-level fairness, or differential item functioning. In the third section, research is considered pertaining to whether tests built to the same set of specifications produce scores that are related in the same way across different gender and ethnic groups. Limitations of the approaches are discussed in the final section.

Large-scale group-score assessments are widely used to inform educational policymakers about the needs and accomplishments of various populations and subpopulations. The purpose of this chapter is to chronicle ETS’s technical contributions in this area. The focus is on a subset of important educational achievement testing programs, ones that assess large populations (e.g., the United States as a whole, an individual state), use population-defining variables (e.g., racial/ethnic, gender), and include consideration of other policy-relevant factors (e.g., the number of hours watching TV, number of mathematics courses taken).

In this chapter, ETS’s work in large-scale adult literacy assessments is described. This work has been designed to meet policy needs, both in the United States and internationally, based on the growing awareness of literacy as human capital. The impact of these assessments has grown as policy makers and other stakeholders have increasingly come to understand the critical role that foundational skills play in allowing individuals to maintain and enhance their ability to meet changing work conditions and societal demands. Findings from these surveys have provided a wealth of information about how the distribution of skills is related to social and economic outcomes. Of equal importance, the surveys and associated research activities have contributed to large-scale assessment methodology, the development of innovative item types and delivery systems, and methods for reporting survey data in ways that ensure its utility to a range of stakeholders and audiences.

This chapter provides a history of ETS’s role in developing assessment instruments and psychometric procedures for measuring change in large-scale national assessments funded by the Longitudinal Studies branch of the National Center for Education Statistics. The chapter documents the innovations developed over more than 30 years of conducting longitudinal studies based on national samples. In addition to describing these innovations, it provides their rationale and presents relevant empirical results.