Samatar, I S; (1983) Evaluating achievement tests on professional and psychometric criteria. Doctoral thesis , Institute of Education, University of London.

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Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study evaluates psychometric and teacher-constructed tests on the bases of separate, but interrelated evidence obtained from: (a) A factor analysis of teachers' opinions about psychometric vs professional testing and test construction procedures. (b) Teachers' judgments of test item properties against students' actual performance on the test items. (c) Empirical evidence obtained from students' performance on tests and ratings of the students on the tests as a whole. The results are discussed in the light of current controversies. A problem encountered in comparing psychometric and professional tests was a lack of a third independent criterion for comparison. An attempt has been made to overcome the problem by combining the 3 sets of evidence. In Part I, the nature of measurement purposes, types, and their interpretations are introduced and discussed in the light of the current opposing views of subjective judgmental and empirical evidential approaches to tests and measurements. Part II concerns an investigation into teachers' attitudes toward psychometric vs professional techniques of assessment of student performances. The purpose was to obtain teachers' attitudes towards types of measurement techniques, to extract from teachers' responses to testing and test construction procedures, their criteria for evaluating test qualities; and to isolate correlates of teachers' positive attitudes towards tests. One hundred and thirty six teachers took part. Part III investigates teachers' ability to judge the suitability of items for inclusion into a test. The purpose was ii (a) to determine the degree of relationship between teachers' ratings of test item properties and empirical values obtained for the same item properties. The objective criterion against which the adequacy of teachers' judgments of the item properties were evaluated was an actual performance of students on the items. The degree of relationship between teacher ratings and students' actual performance was taken to indicate the competence of teachers to judge test item properties. (b) to determine the underlying methods used in judging by examining the relative importance given to different item properties. The degree of relationship between each property and the overall rating was taken to indicate the relative importance of each property to the judgment of the overall item quality. Twenty two teachers and 451 pupils took part in the section. Part IV investigates the relative worth of psychometric and professional tests as judged by the students themselves. The purpose was to ascertain the amount of improvement as judged by students which arises from statistical refinements of a test. Two psychometric and two professional tests were evaluated on evidence obtained from students' performances and ratings on the tests. Ratings were based on values of validity, fairness and relevance. Seventy six students took part. The results reveal (1) the criteria teachers use in judging tests for use with their students (2) the factors which influence these judgments (3) teachers' inability to judge psychometric properties (4) a conflict between the properties teachers and psychometricians value 111 (5) a lack of any distinct preference by the consumers (pupils) for either method of examination. These results are discussed in relation to theory and the practice of examining, especially in Somalia.

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