Abstract
The United States is the world’s largest consumer of tests; and American experience in group testing since the introduction of the Alpha and Beta tests in 1917 has largely determined how tests are constructed, used and interpreted. Prolonged empiricism has generated test theory, or if not quite theory, a mathematical technology with a fully matured belief system about what test performance portends and predicts. Faced with such achievements it is temeritous to insist that test experience in other cultural contexts, and in particular on the continent of Africa, offers serious challenges to conventional assumptions about what test scores mean. The aim of this chapter is to marshall scientific support for the assertion. This requires some preliminary observations about inference from test scores in general, leading to a statement about how test score meanings in the United States are inferred from a network of correlations from different types of variables. A sketch, with examples, of cross-cultural methods is followed by a telegraphic summary of landmark African test studies. Points of confirmation and disagreement with American results are noted and conclusions are drawn. The last part of the paper prescribes a framework for re-constructing test theory and offers an empirical study derived from that prescription.
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Irvine, S.H. (1983). Testing in Africa and America: The Search for Routes. In: Irvine, S.H., Berry, J.W. (eds) Human Assessment and Cultural Factors. NATO Conference Series, vol 21. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2151-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2151-2_4
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