دانلود کتاب روان‌سنجی، نظریه آزمون، و مدل عوامل پنهان

Psychometrics, Test Theory, and the Latent Factors Model by Petr Blahuš, Bruce L. Brown, C. Victor Bunderson, and Joseph A. Olsen is a notable volume that unfolds the concept of measurement in a way that reveals one of its fundamental properties, indeed one of its virtues, that is seldom appreciated by those in the field of psychology who rely most heavily on measurement. It is an aspect of measurement that may be most appreciated and best understood by psychologists deeply engaged in the theoretical and philosophical grounding of the discipline. Expressed in the simplest terms, this approach to measurement and data analysis frees both of them from the metaphysical and epistemological overreach that is the discipline’s legacy from positivism. The importance of this freedom for psychological science and practice is difficult to overstate. Expressed in nonmathematical terms, the genius of the approach articulated in this volume begins with the recognition and affirmation that there is a logic built into numbers, as there is in every language, such that they can convey meaning, consistency, and relationality embedded in the human world of action and purpose. The language of numbers can, therefore, reflect the consistency, relationality, and meaning in the world even at a level that might be very difficult for people simply being-in-the-world to articulate. It is not necessary to invent an “unconscious mind” to account for this phenomenon, as a positivist theoretical approach might require. Rather we can safely assume that there is always more to any “saying” than what is explicitly “said.” That this all occurs within the language of numbers is one of the most important and psychologically relevant revelations in this book. The principle articulated here opens up new methodological as well as metaphysical perspectives and projects for the field. Positivism has essentially a single use for numbers and measurement, i.e. to support metaphysical claims by validating the existence of some concept developed for the purpose of explaining some phenomenon in classical deterministic terms. In contrast to this is the possibility, illuminated in this volume, that the language of numbers, i.e. data, can enhance understanding and provide evidence regarding the content, and meaning of behavior as lived experience, which might otherwise be opaque to practitioners of positivist social science and even to human beings themselves. In other words, rather than simply verifying metaphysical claims in the positivist tradition, a legitimate use of the serious and substantive statistical analysis is to open up possibilities for investigation and understanding from within the lived world. This project is reflected in the book in terms of the discovery of “latent variables”. In nonmathematical laymen’s terms, the innovative power of measurement and analysis can articulate the inarticulate but deeply meaningful world of human life as lived in context, giving the deeply contextual human world of lived experience meaningful mathematical expression. As is clear throughout the various sections of this volume, and nowhere more than in the technical mathematical chapters, this is no mean feat. The chapters in this volume present for the reader the mathematics and concepts underlying the project articulated in this short review. Thus, this volume, admirably, brings sophisticated mathematical principles to bear on an issue of fundamental importance in our understanding of our own humanity. This is a worthy project indeed.