ABSTRACT
This chapter connects assessment arguments to measurement models. The preceding chapters laid out the elements of assessment arguments and added a sociocognitive perspective for understanding them. Some of these elements lead directly to variables in the measurement model: Claims in the argument are progenitors of person variables in measurement models, and data about performances are progenitors of observable variables. Others elements of the argument motivate choices for modeling relationships among the variables, and others shape their situated meanings. This chapter calls attention to issues of construction, context, and meaning that arise in the move. It illustrates the ideas by applying classical test theory and a multidimensional IRT model tuned to a “resources” view of students’ capabilities to a simple but real example. The models provide different narrative structures for organizing and reasoning, in this case even from the same performances, as they instantiate different arguments.
