280 The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 3 psychometric research. This reticence can lead one to read the methodology section of a psychometric study briefly, if at all. Counselor educators might suggest the present article as a resource for students taking classes in research methods and assessment as well as for students who are completing their practicum, internship, or dissertation who are evaluating the rigor of existing measures for use with clients or research participants. Counselor educators should urge their students not to skip over the methodology section of a psychometric study. When selecting instrumentation for use with clients or research participants, counseling students and professionals should begin by reviewing the methodology sections of journal articles and test manuals to ensure that test developers employed rigorous and empirically supported procedures for test development and score validation. Professional counselors and their students can compare the empirical steps and guidelines for structural validation of scores that are presented in this manuscript with the information in test manuals and journal articles of existing instrumentation to evaluate its internal structure. Counselor educators who teach classes in assessment or psychometrics might integrate an instrument evaluation assignment into the course in which students select a psychological instrument and critique its psychometric properties. Another way that counselor educators who teach classes in current issues, research methods, assessment, or ethics can facilitate their students’ assessment literacy development is by creating an assignment that requires students to interview a psychometric researcher. Students can find psychometric researchers by reviewing the editorial board members and authors of articles published in the two peer-reviewed journals of the Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling, Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development and Counseling Outcome Research and Evaluation. Students might increase their interest and understanding about the necessity of assessment literacy by talking to researchers who are passionate about psychometrics. Assessment Literacy: Additional Considerations Internal structure validity of scores is a crucial component of assessment literacy for evaluating the construct validity of test scores (Bandalos & Finney, 2019). Assessment literacy, however, is a vast construct and professional counselors should consider a number of additional aspects of test worthiness when evaluating the potential utility of instrumentation for use with clients. Reviewing these additional considerations is beyond the scope of this manuscript; however, readers can refer to the following features of assessment literacy and corresponding resources: reliability (Kalkbrenner, 2021a), practicality (Neukrug & Fawcett, 2015), steps in the instrument development process (Kalkbrenner, 2021b), and convergent and divergent validity evidence of scores (Swank & Mullen, 2017). Moreover, the discussion of internal structure validity evidence of scores in this manuscript is based on Classical Test Theory (CTT), which tends to be an appropriate platform for attitudinal measures. However, Item Response Theory (see Amarnani, 2009) is an alternative to CTT with particular utility for achievement and aptitude testing. Cross-Cultural Considerations in Assessment Literacy Professional counselors have an ethical obligation to consider the cross-cultural fairness of a test before use with clients, as the validity of test scores are culturally dependent (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2014; Kane, 2010; Neukrug & Fawcett, 2015; Swanepoel & Kruger, 2011). Crosscultural fairness (also known as test fairness) in testing and assessment “refers to the comparability of score meanings across individuals, groups or settings” (Swanepoel & Kruger, 2011, p. 10). There exists some overlap between internal structure validity and cross-cultural fairness; however, some distinct differences exist as well.
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