Philosophy, History, Theory, and Applications of Measurement: Introduction to the JEM Special Issue

A series of conferences on measurement held in Europe led to the founding of the Society for the Study of Measurement (SSM) in 2022.An inaugural meeting was held at the University of California, Berkeley, 4-7 August 2024.SSM explores and seeks to explain measurement in all its varied meanings and uses.SSM members work in the natural and social sciences, and in engineering and policy, but share common philosophical, historical, and practical interests in the full range of qualitative and quantitative issues in measurement.This special issue of the Journal of Educational Measurement initiates a dialogue on measurement's philosophical and historical aspects that includes members of various communities not previously in regular communication.Until now, philosophical and historical articles published in the Journal of Educational Measurement have tended to share vocabularies and perspectives only in a haphazard way.SSM intends to become a community of research and practice altering this circumstance in support of mutually informative exchanges across disciplines.Nearly 100 attendees from fifteen countries on six continents engaged with over 80 presentations at the 2024 meeting.About a third of the presentations were evenly distributed across the topics of models, data science, structures, and simulations.The remaining two thirds were about evenly split between the headings of the history and philosophy of measurement, and measurement applications.Select papers have been published in special issues of the Journal of Educational Measurement (JEM) and Measurement, with 11 submissions to JEM, and 7 to Measurement.Rigorous peer review led to the publication of 8 submissions in JEM, and 4 of the Measurement submissions.The papers presented in this Special Issue of the Journal of Educational Measurement address measurement topics ranging from reading comprehension and oral fluency to belonging in science, anti-racism values, and cultural specificity in STEM assessments.The papers include the following.• "Child engagement and school engagement in education: A systematic literature review from a measurement approach," by C. Miranda, investigates the definitions, properties, and information provided by studies into child engagement and school engagement in an effort aimed at clarifying the effects of theoretical choices and educational priorities.• "An artificial intelligence-enhanced assessment framework for analyzing middle school science students' written responses," by Namsoo Shin, Xunlei Qian, Cory Miller, et al., develops and tests a Large Language Model-based assessment framework to analyze students' written responses to assessment questions, © 2026 National Council on Measurement in Education. 1 of 3 All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies.