As understanding the perspective of the range of typical test takers is the true heart of assessment development, radical empathy is one of RTD’s pillar practices. It informs almost everything that content development professionals do. Empathy is about understanding the perspectives of other people — people who are different from oneself. Radical empathy is the rigorous practice of trying to understand the perspective of some sort of test taker who is different from oneself, and then doing it again for a different sort of test taker, and again and again and again for a wide variety of sorts of test takers.
The practice of radical empathy is necessary to provide valid items, and therefore necessary for the development of tests that can be put to valid purposes and uses. This rigorous practice is more fully explained in the downloads available in the sidebar to the left.
Empathy is Not Sympathy
One does not have to feel good or bad for a person in order to understand their position. Empathy is not about how a person feels about another person or their circumstances; empathy is about whether that person understands the other person. To be sure, empathy can lead to sympathy, but need not. Empathy is merely seeing things through the eyes of another person instead of oneself.
Empathy is Necessary Because Test Developers Are Not Typical Test Takers
Test developers tend to have liked school, and tend to have done well in school. CDPs were often teachers before they found their way to assessment, and psychometricians tend to have liked (and been good at) mathematics. CDPs and the kinds of subject matter experts who work as item writers and on review panels are generally older, more experienced and more expert than test takers. They tend to be more educated and are more likely to be Caucasian than test takers are.
The kind of people who tend to be involved in the development of a test simply are not representative of the types of people who tend to take the test.
If tests are to support valid inferences about test takers’ proficiencies and abilities, CDPs have to understand how test takers will read, understand and think about the items they encounter and how they might attempt to respond to them. Not only do those test takers tend to be very different than CDPs are, they tend to be quite different than CDPs were at an analogous point in their lives.
Item development work requires empathy.
Radical Empathy is Necessary Because There is No Such Thing as a Typical Test Taker
Test takers vary. They vary in an incredible number of ways. There is no singular profile of the takers of any test — even when they have a great deal in common. If test developers were to develop items that support valid inferences just for a small portion of test takers, they would be delivering tests that do not support valid inferences. How could users of tests know for which test takers the tests are appropriate and what should they make of reports on the performance of other sorts of test takers? That is simply a non-starter.
The idea of fairness is that tests should support valid inferences for all test takers. RTD talks about the range of typical test takers because there is no singular test taker, no singular typical test taker. Rather, test users and test developers can expect that there will be a range of types of test takers who vary in a variety of ways. Usually, that range and variation is quite predictable — at least qualitatively.
Radical empathy is necessary because it is the responsibility of all content development professionals to consider the range of typical test takers when developing items and developing tests.
Radical Empathy Is Not an Aptitude
Radical empathy is a rigorous practice that is built upon experience and knowledge of other people and insight into the ways that they think about test content and even testing itself. It cannot be simply explained and taught to mastery, because it depends on an ever-growing and deepening understanding of test takers. It is learned, and used and practiced so that skill with its use develops over time. It must grow in breadth (i.e., understanding more types of test takers) and in depth (i.e., better understanding the perspectives of a particular sort of test taker) as CDPs grow in their professional skills.