The art and science of instrument design

✍ Scribed by Roberta McKnight

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 53 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-1912
• DOI: 10.1002/chp.20023

✦ Synopsis

This pragmatic guide to instrument development is prefaced by the story of a grand vizier who hopes to discover the source of his citizens' discontent. But inquiries from his captain of the guard elicit only fearful reticence. So, the vizier turns to Halcolm, wise teacher and counselor, who insists upon speaking with the people in confidence. Thus, the vizier learns the truth and the authors establish the importance of ethical conduct in research as a foundation for designing instruments that "produce trustworthy and accurate data" ~pp xi-xii!. In this useful book, Colton and Covert provide a wealth of practical ideas, concepts, tools, and examples, describing instrument design as both science and art.

The authors portray instrument design as "purposeful creativity" and make effective use of the visual arts as a metaphor to help the reader grasp key concepts. For example, they compare different paintbrush sizes to the levels of measurement in instrument design and liken the selection of a checklist versus an open-ended questionnaire to an artist's choice of clay or oil paints. The artistic rule of thirds for arranging visual components is compared to the elements of typography, symmetry, and white space in designing data collection instruments. Though psychometrics is seldom considered art, the authors effectively evoke the reader's imagination.

The art metaphor is woven through the 3 sections and 15 chapters of this step-by-step, how-to book. The contents of each section may be summarized as follows:

Disclosure: The author reports none.