Abstract
Principles of fairness in testing require that all test takers, including people with
disabilities, have an equal opportunity to demonstrate their capacity on the construct
being measured. Measurement design features and assessment protocols can pose barriers
for people with disabilities. Fairness in testing is a fundamental validity issue
at all phases in the design, administration, and interpretation of measurement instruments
in clinical practice and research. There is limited guidance for instrument developers
on how to develop and evaluate the accessibility and usability of measurement instruments.
This article describes a 6-stage iterative process for developing accessible computer-administered
measurement instruments grounded in the procedures implemented across several major
measurement initiatives. A key component of this process is interdisciplinary teams
of accessibility experts, content and measurement experts, information technology
experts, and people with disabilities working together to ensure that measurement
instruments are accessible and usable by a wide range of users. The development of
accessible measurement instruments is not only an ethical requirement, it also ensures
better science by minimizing measurement bias, missing data, and attrition due to
mismatches between the target population and test administration platform and protocols.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
IT (Information technology), NIH (National Institutes of Health)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 04, 2017
Footnotes
Supported in whole or in part by Federal funds from the Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, National Institutes of Health for the contract to develop the NIH Toolbox (contract No. HHS-N-260-2006-00007-C), the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research through the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Improving Measurement of Medical Rehabilitation Outcomes (grant no. H133B090024), and the National Children's Study.
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
