Psychometrics

La psicometría convierte una respuesta en un número defendible: psychometrics turns an answer into a defensible number. An answer — and a few lines down this list the same Spanish noun will need a different English word, because la respuesta covers three of ours. It is the « answer » to a question, the thing that can be right or wrong: la respuesta correcta. It is the « response » of a person or a system to something applied to it, which is why the theory on this list is called item response theory and never item answer theory — what is being modelled is not whether somebody was right but how the person reacted to the item. And it is the « reply » to a letter or a message, for which Spanish has no separate word at all: esperamos su respuesta at the foot of a business letter is « we await your reply ». The three are not interchangeable in English, and the difference is not one of politeness — « the answer to the item » has quietly moved the subject from behaviour back to arithmetic.