Measurement and assessment: an editorial view.

If a thing exists, it can be measured—not always well, at least at first, but it can be measured. Measurement is a central component of assessment if we believe that fear, anxiety, intelligence, self-esteem, attention, and similar latent variables exist and are useful to us in developing an understanding of the human condition and leading us to ways to improve it. Clinical assessment, to which this journal is devoted, goes beyond measurement to deal with the development of a broader understanding of individuals and phenomena than measurement alone can provide. Yet without accurate, valid measurements, we are seriously handicapped in our clinical endeavors. The ability and skill to measure variables accurately is a cornerstone to progress in science as well; one need only read in the history of physics, medicine, or biology to discern this fundamental truth. It is also a cornerstone of excellence in professional practice in psychology as well as in research. Good measurement practices precede and presage good assessment. Much of what is published in Psychological Assessment deals with the development and the application of measurement devices of various sorts with the end goal of applications in assessment practice. What is submitted but not published largely deals with the same topics. As the new Editor writing the inaugural editorial, I am focusing on this topic for two major reasons. The first is that the most frequent reason why manuscripts are rejected in the peer-review process for Psychological Assessment and other high-quality journals devoted to clinical or neuropsychological assessment is inadequate attention to sound and high-quality measurement practices. The second reason is my surmise that measurement as a science is no longer taught with the rigor that characterized the earlier years of professional psychology, a position I have reviewed and argued in more detail elsewhere (Reynolds, 2008). It seems that “with the growth of knowledge in areas such as cognitive development, learning, psychopathology, and the biological bases of behavior (e.g., genetics, neuropsychology, and physiological psychology), the teaching of measurement in professional psychology programs is competing more and more with other content domains—and, losing” (Reynolds, 2008, p. 3). This shortchanging of measurement instruction is reflected in numerous ways in clinical practice as well as in research. I have much opportunity to be in contact with a variety of psychologists who practice clinical assessment and engage in research in many disciplines within psychology. As a journal editor for nearly 17 years (over three journals dealing with various aspects of clinical and neuropsychological assessment), an associate editor of several journals, and a member of 15 or more editorial boards, I have read of lot of manuscripts that never see the light of refereed publication. Frequently, we see manuscript submissions that feature poor measuring devices, even though those instruments and the constructs they presumably measure were developed and researched at considerable expense and effort. Despite the time and money, the researchers often give no consideration to principles of item writing, apply no empirical item-selection methods, and use inappropriate reliability estimates of the scores (almost invariably referred to as the reliability of the test); sometimes reliability estimates are conspicuously missing. Seldom is a table of specifications developed to ensure the representativeness of the items to the levels and dimensions of the construct to be measured. The issues associated with domain sampling are largely ignored, as are the nuances of item wording and item format, which clearly can affect the response process and what is actually being measured. Even the issue of clear standardized instructions is ignored in some cases. All too often, a single researcher or a small team will simply write a set of items and begin research on a construct with no apparent awareness that the key first step has been omitted: namely, conducting the necessary research on the measuring device itself, modifying it appropriately, trying out the items again—and again if necessary—and then applying the instrument to the research on the construct in question and making it available to other researchers. Another measurement issue seen often in papers that are not accepted for publication concerns sampling of the population and the ability of a research sample to address the research questions. One of the most frequent issues encountered with submissions to Psychological Assessment in this regard is the use of college students (an obvious sample of convenience) to answer questions about the structure of a test with clinical or referred samples or to test hypotheses about clinical applications of a test in the population at large. Collegiate samples, especially from a single university or campus, are rarely representative of anything beyond students on that campus. Unless the population of interest is very narrowly defined, collegiate samples are not representative of clinical populations, making it inappropriate to generalize outside of the sample (i.e., external validity). Using such narrow samples that are not characteristic of the population at large most often results in an Psychological Assessment © 2010 American Psychological Association 2010, Vol. 22, No. 1, 1–4 1040-3590/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0018811