Measurement and assessment can be considered in terms of its four major components. Construction refers to how the test was created; administration, how participants completed it; scoring, how participants’ responses were transformed into data; and interpretation, how one makes sense of these data. As shown below in Figure 3-1, how a particular measurement method is created (e.g., the selection of test items), how the method is administered, and how items are scored all influence the interpretation of measurement scores.

Figure 7

Steps on the Path to Test Interpretation

To function as a competent test user, learning and understanding all four of these components is necessary. Understanding the field’s limitation in each area is also important when test users make decisions based on test scores.