User-Centered Assessment Design: An Integrated Methodology for Diverse Populations

How can assessment instruments be designed or selected to best serve the needs of intended users, taking into account their interests, capacities, and limitations? Informed by a socioecological perspective, this timely, state-of-the-art reference and text presents an integrated, user-centered process model for developing assessments guided by user contexts. Madhabi Chatterji provides foundational principles and procedures for designing multi-item tests; behavior-based, product-based, and portfolio-based assessments; and self-report instruments. She demonstrates how to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods to devise tools that meet the quality criteria of usefulness and usability alongside validity and reliability. The book features case study discussions; worked-through examples with diverse, global populations; and sample instruments from a variety of disciplines (education, psychology, health care, and others). Chapter overviews and objectives are tied to within-chapter Recaps and Reflection Breaks to further understanding and class discussion.

Madhabi Chatterji, PhD, is Emerita Professor of Measurement, Evaluation, and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she founded and directs the Assessment and Evaluation Research Initiative (AERI). AERI is dedicated to promoting meaningful use of assessment and evaluation information to improve equity and the quality of practices and policies in education, psychology, and the health professions. An award-winning, internationally recognized methodologist and educationist, Dr. Chatterji has taught and mentored numerous doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers over her 30-plus-year career. She is author or editor of more than 100 publications and is a Fellow of the National Education Policy Center. A public intellectual, Dr. Chatterji has spoken out frequently on the limitations of large-scale tests and the adverse social consequences of misused high-stakes educational assessments. Her longstanding scholarly interests lie in instrument design, validation, validity, and test use issues.