Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?

Some blog followers might be interested in a post of the above title [Hake (2010)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: PhysLrnR's Noah Podolefsky (2010) cited "Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?'' [Michelle (2008)] and "Beyond romantic versus sceptic: a microanalysis of conceptual change in kinematics" [Roschelle (1998)] to clarify his questions about "whether the FCI (and other instruments) are 'quantitative'." In my opinion, neither of above references nor Robert Mislevy's “sociocognitive” perspective contradict the premise that the *normalized* pre-to posttest gain on the Force Concept Inventory is a valid and consistently reliable quantitative gauge of the effectiveness of an introductory mechanics course in promoting students conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics.

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To access the complete 11 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/9Fp6QS .

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize theInvention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

REFERENCES [[URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ .]

Hake, R.R. 2010. "Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?" online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/9Fp6QS . Post of 17 Jun 2010 15:34:11-0700 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and PhysLrnR. The abstract and URL are being transmitted to various discussion lists.