Synonyms
Definition
Psychometrics is the construction and validation of measurement instruments and assessing if these instruments are reliable and valid forms of measurement. In behavioral medicine, psychometrics is usually concerned with measuring individual’s knowledge, ability, personality, and types of behaviors. Measurement usually takes place in the form of a questionnaire, and questionnaires must be evaluated extensively before being able to state that they have excellent psychometric properties, meaning a scale is both reliable and valid.
Description
A reliable scale consistently measures the same construct. This can occur across testing sessions, individuals, and settings. A valid measure measures what it says it is going to measure. If something is valid, it is always reliable. However, something can be reliable without being valid.
For example (see Fig. 1), if someone has five darts and is told to hit the bull’s eye every time, their ideal aim is to be both...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References and Further Reading
DeVellis, R. F. (2003). Scale development: Theory and applications (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Grimm, G. L., & Yarnold, P. R. (2000). Reading and understanding more multivariate statistics. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Ginty, A.T. (2020). Psychometric Properties. In: Gellman, M.D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39903-0_480
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39903-0_480
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39901-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39903-0
eBook Packages: MedicineReference Module Medicine