fairness

n. the equitable treatment of test takers in order to eliminate systematic variance in outcome scores among people with different racial or cultural experiences and other background influences. Fundamentally a sociocultural (rather than a technical) issue, fairness is a broad area encompassing quality management in test design, administration, and scoring; adequate coverage of relevant content; sufficient work to establish construct validity; equal learning opportunities and access to testing; and items measuring only the skill or ability under investigation without being unduly influenced by construct-irrelevant variance introduced through test-taker background factors. See also culture-fair test.

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Psychology term of the day

November 24th 2024

regression sum of squares

(symbol: SS_regression) a number indicating the amount of variance in a dependent variable that can be explained by the variance in one or more associated independent variables. It thus describes how well a particular model fits the observed data. For example, in linear regression it is used to calculate a coefficient of determination or a coefficient of multiple determination, and in analysis of variance it is used to determine the total sum of squares and calculate an F ratio. Compare error sum of squares.