Reviewers Guide for the Mental Measurements Yearbook Series

REVIEWER INFORMATION

Reviewing a test is an extremely important professional responsibility with critical implications for test authors, publishers, and users. Invited reviewers are expected to give the test the concentrated attention and care the task demands.

  1. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: If for any reason a reviewer believes he or she has a conflict of interest or is otherwise not in a position to write an objective and unbiased review of a particular test, the reviewer should request a substitute test.
  2. JOINT AUTHORSHIP: Joint authorship of reviews is acceptable only with advance permission from the Buros Center. For reasons both legal and commercial, the invited author must be the first author of the review. As such, the invited author retains full responsibility for the content and quality of the review. Undergraduate students may not serve as coauthors. Due to publication and distribution costs, only one MMY is provided to joint authors.
  3. MAJOR OBJECTIVES: Reviews should be written with these objectives in mind:
    a. To provide test users with carefully prepared appraisals of test materials that provide guidance in selecting and using tests.
    b. To stimulate progress toward higher professional standards of test construction by commending good work, by censuring poor work, and by suggesting improvements.
    c. To impel test authors and publishers to provide more detailed information about the construction, norms (as appropriate), validity and fairness evidence, reliability, appropriate uses, and possible misuses of their tests.
  4. CRITICISM: Reviews should be evaluative, giving credit where credit is due, and describing weaknesses with attention to their likely implications and effects. Reviews should be written primarily for the rank and file of test users. An indication of the relative importance and quality of a test will help users choose tests more wisely with respect to competing instruments.
  5. STANDARDS: Criteria employed for the evaluation of a test should be those generally accepted and endorsed by the professional community. One very useful source of such criteria is the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (2014), which was prepared by a joint committee of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education. This publication can be purchased from the American Educational Research Association website ( aera.net/publications/) and is available from most university libraries.
  6. SECURITY OF TEST MATERIALS: Reviewers have the responsibility of storing all testing materials in a safe and secure location. Unless specifically requested for return by the Buros Center, testing materials should be kept until test reviews have been published in the Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY) series in case questions arise about the content of the review. All test items and test protocols must be treated as confidential. If testing materials are discarded, disposal must occur in a manner that insures no materials may be compromised to third parties.
  7. ACCURACY: Please double-check the factual accuracy of your statements against the test materials provided. Quotation marks, page numbers, and reference citations should be provided with all quotations, using the format of the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2019). Proof copies of all reviews will be sent to the first author for examination.
  8. CONTACTING TEST AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS: If a test manual gives insufficient, contradictory, or ambiguous information regarding the construction, reliability, validity evidence, normative data, or use of a test, reviewers are urged to contact the authors and publishers directly for further information. That said, test authors and publishers are responsible for presenting adequate data in test manuals; failure to do so should be pointed out. If information not available to a test purchaser is used in the review, the source of that information should be clearly indicated.
  9. REFERENCES: Reviewers should cite references in their reviews as needed to acknowledge sources properly, but should limit the number cited, double-check all references for accuracy, and make sure all citations in the text have a corresponding reference listed and vice versa. Reviewers should use and cite primary sources only (i.e., avoid “as cited in” references). Otherwise, reference citations and lists should follow the rules and format outlined in the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2019).
  10. DUAL REVIEWS: To secure a better representation of viewpoints, most tests will have two separate reviews. The editors may delete overlapping, noncritical content in reviews. Reviews will be edited carefully. Substantive changes to reviews will not be made without the reviewer's notification.
  11. PUBLISHER QUOTATIONS: Reviewers are advised that test publishers are allowed to use short quotations (up to 50 words, full sentences only) from test reviews that are consistent with the overall test evaluation written by our reviewers. Test publishers must obtain permission from the Buros Center prior to each use.
  12. PREVIOUS REVIEWS: Often an earlier edition of a test has been reviewed in a previous Mental Measurements Yearbook. If you would like to examine these reviews, and are otherwise unable to access them (through EBSCO, Ovid, or the print Mental Measurements Yearbooks), you may request electronic copies from our assistant editor Gary Anderson at: bimm3@unl.edu

REVIEW FORMAT

  1. GENERAL FORMAT: Clearly indicate the test and forms to be reviewed. Your name, title, and affiliation should precede each review (e.g., John Doe, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland). The review should begin with a new paragraph following the recommended organizational sequence (see #2 below). The reviewer should retain an electronic copy of the review. Reviews should be concise and approximately 1000 to 1600 words.
  2. ORGANIZATION OF TEST REVIEWS: Reviews should be organized using FIVE sections: DESCRIPTION, DEVELOPMENT, TECHNICAL, COMMENTARY, and SUMMARY. Using these sections makes the test reviews easier for our readers to follow, understand, and compare. Additional information will be provided with the testing materials that are sent to invited reviewers. This information is also available at: http://buros.org/reviewers (“Information for Reviewers”).
  3. ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS: Please send us a separate email for each test review and include a personal message clearly identifying the test review being sent. Reviews should be submitted to our assistant editor Gary Anderson at: bimm3@unl.edu
  4. EDITORIAL CHANGES: The Editors reserve the right to make or request changes in or to reject any review that does not meet the standards of the Mental Measurements Yearbook series.