Educational and psychological assessment is a difficult task even when the measurement tools were developed with a certain population in mind. When content or delivery methods clash with cultural norms, results can be misleading or even disastrous for both individual results and data gathering. This collection of essays address using the International Test Commissions Guidelines for Test Adaptation in translating, administrating, and analyzing assessment tools. The first seven essays examine theoretical and methodological issues such as adaptation, ethics, statistical methods for identifying flaws, using bilingual people as evaluators, and establishing score compatibility. The second seven essays address applications in terms of certification programs, translation, simultaneous development, and cross-cultural adaptations of specific educational, admissions, and psychological tests. Each essay includes its own bibliography. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Adapting Educational and Psychological Tests for Cross-Cultural Assessment critically examines and advances new methods and practices for adapting tests for cross-cultural assessment and research. The International Test Commission (ITC) guidelines for test adaptation and conceptual and methodological issues in test adaptation are described in detail, and questions of ethics and concern for validity of test scores in cross-cultural contexts are carefully examined. Advances in test translation and adaptation methodology, including statistical identification of flawed test items, establishing equivalence of different language versions of a test, and methodologies for comparing tests in multiple languages, are reviewed and evaluated. The book also focuses on adapting ability, achievement, and personality tests for cross-cultural assessment in educational, industrial, and clinical settings. This book furthers the ITCs mission of stimulating research on timely topics associated with assessment. It provides an excellent resource for courses in psychometric methods, test construction, and educational and/or psychological assessment, testing, and measurement. Written by internationally known scholars in psychometric methods and cross-cultural psychology, the collection of chapters should also provide essential information for educators and psychologists involved in cross-cultural assessment, as well as students aspiring to such careers. This book will critically examine the dos and donts in adapting tests for cross-cultural assessment and research.
