Neil J. Dorans & Mary Pommerich 
Linking and Aligning Scores and Scales 

In their preface to the second edition of Test Equating, Scaling, and Linking, Mike Kolen and Bob Brennan (2004) made the following observation: “Prior to 1980, the subject of equating was ignored by most people in the measurement community except for psychometricians, who had responsibility for equating” (p. vii). The authors went on to say that considerably more attention is now paid to equating, indeed to all forms of linkages between tests, and that this increased attention can be attributed to several factors: 1. An increase in the number and variety of testing programs that use multiple forms and the recognition among professionals that these multiple forms need to be linked. 2. Test developers and publishers, in response to critics, often refer to the role of linking in reporting scores. 3. The accountability movement and fairness issues related to assessment have become much more visible. Those of us who work in this field know that ensuring comparability of scores is not an easy thing to do. Nonetheless, our customers—the te- takers and score users—either assume that scores on different forms of an assessment can be used interchangeably or, like the critics above, ask us to justify our comparability assumptions. And they are right to do this. After all, the test scores that we provide have an impact on decisions that affect people’s choices and their future plans. From an ethical point of view, we are obligated to get it right.

Зміст

Overview.- Overview.- Foundations.- A Framework and History for Score Linking.- Data Collection Designs and Linking Procedures.- Equating.- Equating: Best Practices and Challenges to Best Practices.- Practical Problems in Equating Test Scores: A Practitioner’s Perspective.- Potential Solutions to Practical Equating Issues.- Tests in Transition.- Score Linking Issues Related to Test Content Changes.- Linking Scores Derived Under Different Modes of Test Administration.- Tests in Transition: Discussion and Synthesis.- Concordance.- Sizing Up Linkages.- Concordance: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.- Some Further Thoughts on Concordance.- Vertical Scaling.- Practical Issues in Vertical Scaling.- Methods and Models for Vertical Scaling.- Vertical Scaling and No Child Left Behind.- Assessments Linking Group Assessments to Individual.- Linking Assessments Based on Aggregate Reporting: Background and Issues.- An Enhanced Method for Mapping State Standards onto the NAEP Scale.- Using Aggregate-Level Linkages for Estimation and Validation: Comments on Thissen and Braun & Qian.- Postscript.