Applied Psychometrics Using SAS

The book will be designed primarily for graduate students (or advanced undergraduates) who arelearning psychometrics, as well as professionals in the field who need a reference for use in theirpractice. We would assume that users have some basic knowledge of using SAS to read data andconduct basic analyses (e.g., descriptive statistics, frequency distributions). In addition, thereader should be familiar with basic statistical concepts such as descriptive statistics (e.g., mean,median, variance, standard deviation), percentiles and the rudiments of hypothesis testing. Theyshould also have a passing familiarity with issues in psychometrics such as reliability, validityand test/survey scoring. We will not assume any more than basic familiarity with these issues,and will devote a portion of each chapter (as well as the entire first chapter) to reviewing many ofthese basic ideas for those not familiar with them.We envision the book as being useful either as a primary text for a course on appliedmeasurement where SAS is the main platform for instruction, or as a supplement to a moretheoretical text. We also anticipate that readers working in government agencies responsible fortesting and measurement issues at the local, state and national levels, and private testing, surveyand market research companies, as well as faculty members needing a practical resource for psychometric practice will serve as amarket for the book. In short, the readership would include graduate students, faculty members, data analysts and psychometriciansresponsible for analysis of survey response data, as well as educational and psychological assessments.The goal of the book is to provide readers with the tools necessary for assessing the psychometric qualities of educational andpsychological measures as well as surveys and questionnaires. Each chapter will cover an issue pertinent to psychometric andmeasurement practice, with an emphasis on application. Topics will be briefly discussed from a theoretical/technical perspective inorder to provide the reader with the background necessary to correctly use and interpret thestatistical analyses that will be presented subsequently. Readers will then be presented withexamples illustrating a particular concept (e.g., reliability). These examples will include adiscussion of the particular analysis, along with the SAS code necessary to conduct them.The resulting output will then be discussed in detail, focusing on the interpretation of theresults. Finally, examples of how these results might be written up will also be included in thetext. It is hoped that this mixture of theory with examples of actual practice will serve thereader both as a pedagogical tool and as a reference work.