Guest lecture: Fulbright Scholar Professor David Feldon

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The talk

Using mixed methods in measurement: New psychometric tools to account for perspective within measurement models

Presenting work from his 2024 book, Mixed Methods for Psychological Measurement, Dr. David Feldon challenges the common practice of excluding individual differences in sensemaking, experience, and positionality from the construction of quantified measures.  Historically, the goal of measurement has been to eliminate or disregard the influence of these aspects of human existence to maximize the direct comparability of measured quantities (to preserve the argument that an attained score for one person has the same meaning as the same score attained by another person). However, from a critical realist perspective, reality is comprised of both universal realities and individual understandings, so the classic psychometric approach produces scores that are inherently less valid due to their truncated reflection of phenomena. His work applies mixed methods (integrated qualitative and quantitative data and analysis) approaches to measurement construction and validation by deliberately integrating individual perspectives into measurement models and rejecting the assumption that such sources of variance in scores are “measurement error.” His talk will present both philosophical arguments for this approach and the demonstration of multiple empirical techniques with real world data that are broadly applicable across human and social sciences.

About Professor David Feldon

David F. Feldonis a professor of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences in the College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University and a 2025 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Newcastle. His scholarship identifies mechanisms of learning and postsecondary education that facilitate the equitable development of expertise – specifically in STEM disciplines. This work attempts to build bridges from a deep understanding of motivation and cognition to the broader cultural and structural influences that shape divergent pathways to expertise and professional success. Dr. Feldon is the editor of the journal Instructional Science and received the 2019 Award for Significant Contributions to Educational Measurement and Research from Division D of the American Educational Research Association.