ABSTRACT

There is a cognitive psychology and a social psychology of standard setting. Fitzpatrick (1989) identified several aspects of the social interactions in standard setting workshops and described social psychological research that is relevant to the thinking and decisions of standard setting panelists. Panelists’ thinking and decision making processes are the cognitive psychology of standard setting. In this chapter we describe the Item-Descriptor (ID) Matching standard setting method. We also describe emerging research on standard setting panelist cognition and decision making that is relevant to the appropriateness of the cognitive-judgmental task required in ID Matching and other standard setting methods. The relevant research resides in the standard setting literature and cognitive psychology literature. We refer throughout this chapter to ID Matching as a method, rather than a procedure, because the procedural aspects of common standard setting methods (e.g., training, practice, background information, materials, feedback) are similar. To us, the panelist’s cognitive-judgmental tasks are the distinguishing features of the various standard setting methods.