On the philosophical foundations of psychological measurement

Abstract

Measurement has played a central role in the development of the physical sciences and engineering, and is considered by many to be a privileged method for acquiring information about the world. It is thus unsurprising that the psychological sciences have also attempted to develop methods for measurement. However, it is not clear how the ways in which psychological scientists understand measurement accord with how the concept is understood in other scientific disciplines, or by the professional and general publics. In part this may be due to the ways in which several distinct strands of thinking about scientific inquiry (and measurement in particular) have influenced the work of psychological..