The purpose of achievement testing is to measure some aspect of the intellectual competence of human beings: what a person has learned to know or to do. Teachers use achievement tests to measure the attainments of their students. Employers use achievement tests to measure the competence of prospective employees. Professional associations use achievement tests to exclude unqualified applicants from the practice of the profession. In any circumstances where it is necessary or useful to distinguish persons of higher from those of lower competence or attainments, achievement testing is likely to occur.
The varieties of intellectual competence that may be developed by formal education, self-study, or other types of experience are numerous and diverse. There is a corresponding number and diversity of types of tests used to measure achievement. In this article attention will be directed mainly toward the measurement of cognitive achievements by means of paper and pencil tests. The justifications for this limitation are (1) that cognitive achievements are of central importance to effective human behavior, (2) that the use of paper and pencil tests to measure these achievements is a comparatively well-developed and effective technique, and (3) that other aspects of intellectual competence will be discussed in other articles, such as those on motivation, learning, attitudes, leadership, aesthetics, and personality.