What's the "Average Normalized Gain" ?

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

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ABSTRACT: In response to "Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?" [Hake (2010)], Michael Martin of the EDDRA2 list wrote (paraphrasing): "Hake's post refers to the 'normalized' scores from pretest to posttest. If the meaning is 'standardized' such as the SAT and other Z-score tests, I have a problem." Rather than "having a problem" and then incinerating a straw man, Martin might have considered simply clicking on http://bit.ly/9Fp6QS and then scanning the *entire* post and a few of its references so as to discover that the "average normalized gain" is *defined* as the *actual* gain (<%post> - <%pre>) divided by the *maximum possible gain* (100% - <%pre>), where the angle brackets indicate the class averages. Thus the average normalized gain HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PSYCHOMETRIC "NORMALIZED" SCORES FROM PRETEST TO POSTTEST." That the average normalized gain is a valid and consistently reliable quantitative gauge of the effectiveness of an introductory mechanics course in promoting students' conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics is discussed in e.g., "Design-Based Research In Physics Education Research: A Review" [Hake (2008)].

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To access the complete 16 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/9GB2R2 .

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention 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. "What's the 'Average Normalized Gain' ? (was Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?)" online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/9GB2R2 . Post of 22 Jun 2010 11:23:38 -0700 to AERA-L, EDDRA2, & Net-Gold. The abstract and URL are being transmitted to various discussion lists.