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The author is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Illinois and here offers an introductory study of the fundamental ideas which lie behind the construction of instruments for research, i.e., those instruments of ideological formulation of service in this particular field.
He discusses the meaning of measurement, intellectual antecedents of educational measurements, early development and classification, logical foundations and aspects, performance and validity, addition and performance, addition and quality scales, and the outlook of educational measurement.
Mankind used the finger (inch), span and elbow for measuring long before they made tape measures and calipers, but who, save in a pinch, as does the housewife measuring off a yard of calico by the stretch from her nose to the tip of her fingers, would go back to such variable standards? One would be put to it to find a household—of moderate economic status—without a tape measure.
Dr. Smith, however, does not deal, save by implication, with such innocent beginnings—he deals with intellectual tools of precision, or rather with the principles of logic that lie behind them and as having relation to intellectual measurement officially introduced, for the most part, by Thorndike at Columbia, but instigated by the work of J. M. Rice, a crusader for the scientific study of educational problems.
From these earlier beginnings, the author advances to the “tests” and the validity of the whole conception of mental measurements. Ambivalence, here called polarity, is taken into account, and later behavior as a primary datum is intelligently discussed.
The “self” as a “structure of attitudes” is an apt but incomplete phrase which the author would supplement, with a gestalt background.
The author makes out a good case for his general thesis. We cavil a bit, albeit small, that one finds little or no reference to holistic conceptions of the human animal.