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THE PSYCHOMETRY OF OBJECTIVE MOTIVATION MEASUREMENT: A RESPONSE TO THE CRITIQUE OF COOPER AND KLINE
Author(s) -
CATTELL R. B.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
british journal of educational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.557
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 2044-8279
pISSN - 0007-0998
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8279.1982.tb00831.x
Subject(s) - psychology , homogeneity (statistics) , confusion , criticism , modalities , social psychology , test validity , psychometrics , test (biology) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , statistics , psychoanalysis , mathematics , social science , art , paleontology , literature , sociology , biology
S ummary . In the last 40 years the evaluation of tests has developed from an itemetric to a structural psychometric viewpoint. A contemporary critique of the Motivation Analysis Test, however, illustrates the need for a wider appreciation of this advance than is manifested in many current discussions on tests. Perhaps the most frequent instance of this problem is the confusion of the homogeneity coefficient with a reliability coefficient or even with a concept validity coefficient. The MAT criticism is shown to be faulty in not recognising that ( a ) validity tends to be better with low than high homogeneity; ( b ) item correlation with the test pool is, through specifics, substantially lower than with the factor; ( c ) when there are, as here, few items per scale, the removal of the item from the pool underestimates the mean r of items with the pool; ( d ) motivation and interest measurement, by contrast with, say, ability measurements, require, for a broad factor (e.g., an ergic (drive) expression), a far broader coverage in content and in method, i.e., low homogeneity is needed also on psychological grounds; ( e ) dynamic traits are also culturally more embedded than other modalities and the test examined had not been adapted to an English milieu. Advance in objective dynamic structure measures requires special skills ( a ) psycho‐metrically, because of the instrument factor and ipsative scoring problems and ( b ) psychologically, because high clinical insight and creative artistry is demanded in item construction.