AERA to Release New Volume on Fairness in Educational and Psychological Testing


March 2022

This April, AERA will release a new, groundbreaking volume, Fairness in Educational and Psychological Testing: Examining Theoretical, Research, Practice, and Policy Implications of the 2014 Standards, edited by Jessica L. Jonson and Kurt F. Geisinger. The table of contents can be viewed here.

The volume emanated from a 2017 AERA-sponsored conference, “Fairness in Educational and Psychological Tests: Critical Issues and Methodological Solutions.” The participants identified critical fairness issues addressed by the Standards and important to testing in different professional fields; shared empirical and methodological scholarship for investigating fairness across different types of educational and psychological tests; and identified gaps in research and practice to encourage advancements in how fairness evidence is gathered, used, and documented for tests.

The forthcoming volume, which includes 16 chapters along with an Introduction and Conclusion, builds on the work of the conference and examines scholarship, best practice methodologies, and examples of policy and practice from various professional fields in education and psychology to illuminate the elevated emphasis on test fairness in the 2014 Standards.

Together, the chapters provide a survey of critical and current issues with a view to broadening and contextualizing the fairness guidelines for different types of tests, test takers, and testing contexts.  Researchers and practitioners from school psychology, clinical/counseling psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, and education will find the content useful for thinking more acutely about fairness in testing. The book also has chapters that address implications for policy makers, and, in some cases, the public. These discussions are offered as a starting point for future scholarship on the theoretical, empirical, and applied aspects of fairness in testing, particularly in light of the ever-increasing importance of addressing equity in testing. 

Fairness in Educational and Psychological Testing will be available for advance purchase on the AERA website in April, in paperback and e-book formats. It will also be available at the 2022 AERA Annual Meeting in San Diego.

About the Editors

Jessica L. Jonson is a research associate professor in the Buros Center for Testing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She previously served as director of institutional assessment at the university. Her research interests include assessment literacy for professionals in educational and psychology, assessment of student learning in higher education, fairness in testing, assessment of social-emotional learning, and the application of measurement fundamentals according to professional standards and guidelines. Jonson has been a principal or co-principal investigator for three grant projects funded by the Spencer Foundation and AERA. She has shared this work through presentations/workshops at a wide variety of professional conferences and through invited book chapters and publications in several leading educational measurement and higher education assessment journals. She has also co-edited three volumes in the Mental Measurement Yearbook series and regularly co-authors psychometric consultation reports produced for various state departments of education.

Kurt F. Geisinger is director of the Buros Center for Testing and Meierhenry Distinguished University Professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He previously served as professor of psychology/chair of the Psychology Department at Fordham University and as a dean and academic vice president/provost. He has edited/co-edited or written more than 12 volumes, including the APA Handbook of Testing and Assessment in Psychology; Psychological Testing of Hispanics (two editions); Test Interpretation and Diversity: Achieving Equity in Assessment; High-Stakes Testing in Education; Psychological Testing in the Service of Disability Determination; five volumes of the Mental Measurements Yearbook; several editions of Tests in Print; two of Pruebas Publicadas en EspaƱol; and several monographs and instructors’ manuals. He has edited the journal Applied Measurement in Education since 2006 and has served on about a dozen editorial boards. He has published approximately 140 chapters and journal articles.