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Journal article
Psychological Measurement and Methodological Realism
Erkenntnis, Vol.78(4), pp.739-761
08/2013
Web of Science ID: WOS:000324113500003
Abstract
Within the context of psychological measurement, realist commitments pervade methodology. Further, there are instances where particular scientific practices and decisions are explicable most plausibly against a background assumption of epistemic realism. That psychometrics is a realist enterprise provides a possible toehold for Stephen Jay Gould’s objections to psychometrics in
The Mismeasure of Man
and Joel Michell’s charges that psychometrics is a “pathological science.” These objections do not withstand scrutiny. There are no fewer than three activities in ongoing psychometric research which presuppose a commitment to a minimal epistemic realism. Those activities include selecting between different models for representing data, estimating ability in the context of item response theory, and the move to make the individual the fundamental unit of analysis in psychometrics thereby calling for a shift in what sorts of data are evidentially relevant. In none of these activities are the commitments and disregard for evidence that Gould and Michell find objectionable or “pathological.”
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Details
- Title
- Psychological Measurement and Methodological Realism
- Publication Details
- Erkenntnis, Vol.78(4), pp.739-761
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Number of pages
- 23
- Copyright
- © 2013, Springer Science Business Media Dordrecht
- Identifiers
- WOS:000324113500003; 99380592013006600
- Academic Unit
- History and Philosophy; College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities
- Language
- English