What is Evidence Centered Design?
Major Characteristics of ECD
ECD is a logical, systematic approach to test creation. The primary
goal of ECD is to base important aspects of test design, test
development, test scoring, and test use on sound evidentiary
reasoning. ECD treats assessment as a process of reasoning from the determine how best to provide evidence to support those inferences
within the constraints of the testing program. ECD also encourages
thinking about the interrelationships among the various layers of the
entire process of test design, development, and use, emphasizing not
only what occurs within each layer, but also how the layers are
logically related to each other. As Mislevy and Riconscente (2005)
wrote, ECD is “a framework that makes explicit the structures of
assessment arguments, the elements and processes through which
they are instantiated, and the relationships among them” (p. iv).
A capsule view of the rationales underlying ECD was provided by
Mislevy, Almond, and Lukas (2003):