The Use of Test Scores for Classification Decisions with Threshold Utility

1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim J. van der Linden
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim J. van der Linden

The classification problem consists of assigning subjects to one of several available treatments on the basis of their test scores, where the success of each treatment is measured by a different criterion. It is indicated how this problem can be formulated as an (empirical) Bayes decision problem. As an example, the case of classification with a threshold utility function is analyzed, and optimal assignment rules are derived. The results are illustrated empirically with data from a classification problem in which achievement test data are used to assign students to appropriate continuation schools.


1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Ratusnik ◽  
Roy A. Koenigsknecht

Six speech and language clinicians, three black and three white, administered the Goodenough Drawing Test (1926) to 144 preschoolers. The four groups, lower socioeconomic black and white and middle socioeconomic black and white, were divided equally by sex. The biracial clinical setting was shown to influence test scores in black preschool-age children.


2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-31
Author(s):  
Lyn Robertson

Abstract Learning to listen and speak are well-established preludes for reading, writing, and succeeding in mainstream educational settings. Intangibles beyond the ubiquitous test scores that typically serve as markers for progress in children with hearing loss are embedded in descriptions of the educational and social development of four young women. All were diagnosed with severe-to-profound or profound hearing loss as toddlers, and all were fitted with hearing aids and given listening and spoken language therapy. Compiling stories across the life span provides insights into what we can be doing in the lives of young children with hearing loss.


2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisli H. Gudjonsson ◽  
Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson

Summary: The Gudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS), the COPE Scale, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were administered to 212 men and 212 women. Multiple regression of the test scores showed that low self-esteem and denial coping were the best predictors of compliance in both men and women. Significant sex differences emerged on all three scales, with women having lower self-esteem than men, being more compliant, and using different coping strategies when confronted with a stressful situation. The sex difference in compliance was mediated by differences in self-esteem between men and women.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 737-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Gess ◽  
Christoph Geiger ◽  
Matthias Ziegler

Abstract. Although the development of research competency is an important goal of higher education in social sciences, instruments to measure this outcome often depend on the students’ self-ratings. To provide empirical evidence for the utility of a newly developed instrument for the objective measurement of social-scientific research competency, two validation studies across two independent samples were conducted. Study 1 ( n = 675) provided evidence for unidimensionality, expected differences in test scores between differently advanced groups of students as well as incremental validities over and above self-perceived research self-efficacy. In Study 2 ( n = 82) it was demonstrated that the competency measured indeed is social-scientific and relations to facets of fluid and crystallized intelligence were analyzed. Overall, the results indicate that the test scores reflected a trainable, social-scientific, knowledge-related construct relevant to research performance. These are promising results for the application of the instrument in the evaluation of research education courses in higher education.


2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 164-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Rabbitt ◽  
Mary Lunn ◽  
Danny Wong

There is new empirical evidence that the effects of impending death on cognition have been miscalculated because of neglect of the incidence of dropout and of practice gains during longitudinal studies. When these are taken into consideration, amounts and rates of cognitive declines preceding death and dropout are seen to be almost identical, and participants aged 49 to 93 years who neither dropout nor die show little or no decline during a 20-year longitudinal study. Practice effects are theoretically informative. Positive gains are greater for young and more intelligent participants and at all levels of intelligence and durations of practice; declines in scores of 10% or more between successive quadrennial test sessions are risk factors for mortality. Higher baseline intelligence test scores are also associated with reduced risk of mortality, even when demographics and socioeconomic advantage have been taken into consideration.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 204-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Lacot ◽  
Mohammad H. Afzali ◽  
Stéphane Vautier

Abstract. Test validation based on usual statistical analyses is paradoxical, as, from a falsificationist perspective, they do not test that test data are ordinal measurements, and, from the ethical perspective, they do not justify the use of test scores. This paper (i) proposes some basic definitions, where measurement is a special case of scientific explanation; starting from the examples of memory accuracy and suicidality as scored by two widely used clinical tests/questionnaires. Moreover, it shows (ii) how to elicit the logic of the observable test events underlying the test scores, and (iii) how the measurability of the target theoretical quantities – memory accuracy and suicidality – can and should be tested at the respondent scale as opposed to the scale of aggregates of respondents. (iv) Criterion-related validity is revisited to stress that invoking the explanative power of test data should draw attention on counterexamples instead of statistical summarization. (v) Finally, it is argued that the justification of the use of test scores in specific settings should be part of the test validation task, because, as tests specialists, psychologists are responsible for proposing their tests for social uses.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document