At 12:57 PM 2/5/2003, jim clark wrote:
of course ... the problem with this is CI error band notion is ..... that, we could use this same argument to RAISE the cut scores too ... or round the students' scores DOWNI routinely raise grades just below boundaries to the next higher level, not for institutional reasons, but rather for what I think are valid statistical/measurement reasons (biased somewhat perhaps by a desire to err on the side of the students). Or if you thought about a confidence interval around obtained grades, the likelihood that the interval around 79 overlaps with 80 is much higher than that the interval around 78 overlaps with 80. So I see the practice as simply some acknowledgement that our measures involve error (perhaps unlike jumping between roof-tops, as mentioned in a previous post).
measurement error works BOTH ways and ... giving the benefit of the doubt to the student is not the same thing as accounting for measurement error
it is not really measurement error that drives us to DOWNWARD move the cut scores ... or round student scores UPward ... it's that we know that WE are not perfect and ... would rather add some tolerance to OUR decision making to save our hides such that ... IF a student were to come and challenge us ... we can point to the fact that we have moved either their score up or ... the cut score down ... hence trying to FEND off arguments and grade hassles
_________________________________________________________Best wishes Jim ============================================================================ James M. Clark (204) 786-9757 Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax University of Winnipeg 4L05D Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark ============================================================================ . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university
208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
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