PARTITIONING METHODS FOR DETECTING MISCONCEPTIONS OF CONTENT AND TEST ITEMS

Two studies were undertaken to evaluate partitioning methods, in order to study how items are perceived by students and to determine how students organize content. Achievement test items in five content areas of educational measurement were used as stimuli to be sorted by groups of students who vari...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of educational measurement 1979-10, Vol.16 (3), p.187-195
Main Authors: AMBROSINO, ROBERT J., MCMORRIS, ROBERT F., NOVAL, LORRAINE K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
A priori knowledge
Achievement tests
Advanced students
Educational objectives
High school students
Misconception
Multidimensional scaling
Outliers
Standard error
Undergraduate students
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Summary:Two studies were undertaken to evaluate partitioning methods, in order to study how items are perceived by students and to determine how students organize content. Achievement test items in five content areas of educational measurement were used as stimuli to be sorted by groups of students who varied in their sophistication with the subject matter. Sortings by more sophisticated groups were expected to agree more with target sortings than were sortings by less sophisticated groups. Specifically, sortings were analyzed using target partitioning and hierarchical clustering analysis. Results from both studies strongly supported the expected relationship between sorting agreement and group sophistication. Several misconceptions among the students concerning the content under study were revealed, and alternate reasons for mispartitioning were considered. It was concluded that partitioning methods were useful for studying how items were perceived by students and for determining how students organized content. Applications of partitioning methodology and investigations of relationships with other types of data were discussed.
ISSN:0022-0655
1745-3984
DOI:10.1111/j.1745-3984.1979.tb00100.x