Psychometric Theory

Rating:
Summary: get the 2nd edition
Review: I am in a management PhD program and we have to read this book for our required class in psychometric theory. I totally agree with one of the other reviewers that almost no term is clearly defined by Nunnally and Bernstein in this 3rd edition. The book goes on and on and on talking about validity, reliability, scaling, ... without defining any single term in a concise manner. It is very frustrating!
So, my suggestion for everyone is to get the 2nd edition. I read it and was happily surprised. Nunnally is great, Ira Bernstein messed the 3rd edition up (Nunnally died a while ago and Bernstein was responsible for the writing of this edition). The previous edition is much, much shorter and has better organized chapters that go right to the point (well, relatively speaking ). In addition, I recommend several short Sage books (e.g., factor analysis from Kim and Mueller), which are much clearer.
In any case, this book or better the 2nd edition, is a must have for any social science researcher (or wanna be researcher ).

Rating:
Summary: The material may be good, but it's tough to get through
Review: I'm in a Ph.D. program, and this is the required reading for our psychometric test. I was looking on the Border's web site to find a different book to read that would cover the same material, that would not be so difficult to understand. Nunally has a nasty habit of poorly defining terms, which makes it extremely difficult to grasp what he is talking about. It's challenging enough to understand psychometric theory, let alone with a practically illegible textbook! This book needs rewriting! I've given it two stars because supposedly the book contains a lot of valuable material. Of course, this doesn't matter one whit when you can't even read the darn thing!
So professors, please, don't do this to your students!!!

Rating:
Summary: A great guideline for Tests
Review: It's a very concise book and describes the theory in a very didatic way. The only problem of the book is the little enphasis to the Item Response theory (IRT).

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable
Review: The thing I most admire about Nunnally is how well his work holds up even decades after the book was first written, and Nunnally's own death. Although academic works such as this typically have a half life of two or three years, it seems that Nunnally may be even more useful now than it was twenty-five years ago. There are other books that address the same type of material, but they all cite Nunnally, and none have, as yet, effectively replaced him.

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable
Review: The thing I most admire about Nunnally is how well his work holds up even decades after the book was first written, and Nunnally's own death. Although academic works such as this typically have a half life of two or three years, it seems that Nunnally may be even more useful now than it was twenty-five years ago. There are other books that address the same type of material, but they all cite Nunnally, and none have, as yet, effectively replaced him.