Using the concept of a measurement system to characterize measurement models used in psychometrics

Abstract

The philosophy of measurement in the social and behavioral sciences is seen (from without) as typically following the representational viewpoint. However, in practice, this is not the case for the great majority of measures that are developed in this area. The paper surveys several approaches to measurement in the social sciences (i.e., Classical Test Theory, Guttman Scaling, Item Response Theory, Rasch Scaling, and Construct Modeling), as examples of measurement approaches in the area of psychometrics, and uses the foundational concept of a measuring system, as developed by Mari [1], to explicate the logic on which these approaches are based and thus enable a comparison with measurement app..