In response to my post "Should We Measure Change? YES!" [Hake (2006)],
Ramona Morris (2006) of the Ontario Police College, Canada, responded
in an AERA-D post of 31 Mar 2006:
"What is the most appropriate analysis to determine if/to what extent
education has an effect on performance [in pre/post test results]?
IF police education were like introductory physics education (i.e.,
involving conceptually difficult material), then the central question
might be something like:
Q1. "What methods of police education lead to the largest average
normalized gains <g> on a valid and consistently reliable test
devised by police experts on the basic concepts of effective police
work?"
Or, more generally,
*******************************************
IF X education were like introductory physics education (i.e.,
involving conceptually difficult material), then the central question
might be something like:
Q1. "What methods of X education lead to the largest average
normalized gains <g> on a valid and consistently reliable test
devised by X experts on the basic concepts of effective X practice?"
*******************************************
Here the average normalized gain is defined as:
<g> = [<%post> - <%pre>] / [100% - <%pre>] . . . . . . . (1a),
that is,
<g> = [actual gain ] / [maximum possible gain] . . . . (1b)
and for the analysis to be meaningful it would need to be shown that
the correlation between <g> and <%pre> for many different courses
employing various educational methods was relatively low, as appears
to be the case in introductory physics education [Hake (1998a,b)].
But Ramona Morris evidently is not seeking an answer to question Q1.
Rather she wants to answer another question:
Q2. "For a *given method* of police education what is the influence
of prior education on pre/post testing results?"
One approach would be to first determine correlation coefficients
between some gauge of "educational preparation" (e.g., "years of
prior schooling") with *single student* scores on %pre, %post, actual
gain G = [%post - %pre], and normalized gain [%post - %pre] / [100 -
%pre].
Although my only contact with the police is as a recipient of
speeding tickets, I think that regardless of the apparent answer to
question Q2, it might not be a bad idea to seek an answer to question
Q1 for various populations in police academies.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>
REFERENCES
Hake, R.R. 1998a. "Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A
six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory
physics courses," Am. J. Phys. 66: 64-74; online as ref. 24 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>, or simply click on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/ajpv3i.pdf> (84 kB).
Hake, R.R. 1998b. "Interactive-engagement methods in introductory
mechanics courses," online as ref. 25 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>, or simply click on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/IEM-2b.pdf> (108 kB) - a
crucial companion paper to Hake (1998a).
Hake, R.R. 2006. "Should We Measure Change? YES!" online at
<http://interversity.org/lists/arn-l/archives/Mar2006_date/msg00201.html>
Post of 24 Mar 2006 10:49:00-0800 to AERA-C, AERA-D, AERA-J, AERA-L,
ASSESS, ARN-L, EDDRA, EvalTalk, EdStat, MULTILEVEL, PsychTeacher
(rejected), PhysLrnR, POD, SEMNET, STLHE-L, TeachingEdPsych, & TIPS.
Morris, R. 2006. "Should We Measure Change? YES!" AERA-D post of 31
Mar 2006 13:34:15-0500; online at
<http://lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0603&L=aera-d&T=0&O=D&X=2F55A37E4A7F100D6B&Y=rrhake%40earthlink.net&P=4501>,
or more compactly at <http://tinyurl.com/r3pzb>.
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