Louis Guttman's Contributions to Classical Test Theory

Abstract

This article focuses on Louis Guttman’s contributions to the classical theory of ed- ucational and psychological tests, one of the lesser known of his many contribu- tions to quantitative methods in the social sciences. Guttman’s work in this field provided a rigorous mathematical basis for ideas that, for many decades after Spearman’s initial work, had been somewhat ambiguous and not adequately for- malized. It anticipated later developments that are more widely known in education and psychology.