Testing's Place in Society: An Essay Review of "Testing Testing: Social Consequences of the Examined Life" by F. Allen HansonTesting Testing: Social Consequences of the Examined Life. F. Allen Hanson

Abstract

Allen Hanson has produced a fascinating, readable, anthropological analysis of testing as a social institution. This book should be required reading for all measurement students, their professors, policymakers who see testing as a panacea for the perceived ills of our society, and concerned citizens unaware of testing's pervasive influences on their lives. Hanson's exploration covers the gamut of contemporary testing, from tests of integrity, truthfulness, and drug tests called authenticity tests (i.e., tests designed to identify some qualitative state of being about a person, often with moral or legal significance) through tests of achievement, intelligence, and vocational interests called qualifying tests (i.e., tests of a person's inclination or ability to perform certain acts). Hanson certainly achieves his stated intent ofuncover[ing] in the everyday operation of testing a series of well-concealed and mostly unintended consequences that exercise far deeper and more pervasive influence in social life than is commonly recognized (p. 2). He does this by developing two central theses. The first is that tests, to a significant degree, produce or fabricate the personal constructs they purport to measure. Hanson argues that tests are concerned with reality as constructed by culture. They are not, and cannot be, measures or indicators of some purely objective, independently existing state of affairs. This position is consistent with Feyerabend's defense of relativism (1987). Since test results are not objective in the scientist's sense