The theme of the 2016 Annual Meeting was Foundations and Frontiers: Advancing Educational Measurement for Research, Policy, and Practice. This theme acknowledges the variety of stakeholders that use educational assessments, including educators, policy makers, and researchers.
Stakeholder uses of educational assessments are diversifying and expanding with the advent of new measurement methods and new methods of data collection. In this shifting environment, innovation is necessary, yet foundational principles of measurement, especially the concepts of validity and reliability, have never been more important.
In recognition of both measurement foundations and measurement frontiers, the program committee seeks a broad range of proposals, in particular those that concern:
- Relevant approaches for improving reliability of assessment scores and validity of their uses,
- Novel methods of data collection and analysis,
- The measurement and relevance of novel constructs related to education,
- Novel applications and uses of educational assessment data,
- Understanding of problems posed by recent and future uses of test scores,
- Solutions to these problems.