The Big Five personality traits play a major role in student achievement. As such, there is consistent evidence that students that are more conscientious receive better teacher-assigned grades in secondary school. However, research often does not support the claim that students that are more conscientious similarly achieve higher scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests. Based on the Invest-and-Accrue Model, we argue that conscientiousness explains to some extent why certain students receive better grades despite similar academic accomplishments. Therefore, the (...) present study examines to what extent the relationship between student personality and teacher-assigned grades consists of direct as opposed to indirect associations. We used a representative sample of 14,710 ninth-grade students to estimate these direct and indirect pathways in mathematics and German. Structural equation models showed that test scores explained between 8 and 11% of the variance in teacher-assigned grades in mathematics and German. The Big Five personality traits in students additionally explained between 8 and 10% of the variance in grades. Finally, the personality-grade relationship consisted of direct and indirect associations via test scores. Conscientiousness explained discrepancies between teacher-assigned grades and students’ scores in domain-specific standardized tests to a greater extent than any of the other Big Five personality traits. Our findings suggest that students that are more conscientious may invest more effort to accomplish classroom goals, but fall short of mastery. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between social and emotional abilities and standardized test results among elementary school students in Saudi Arabia. The data was collected using a purposive sampling strategy, with the Social and Emotional Learning Assessment Scale (SELAS) used to assess skills and actual educational material utilized to provide standardized test results. Data analysis involves the utilization of descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients, regression assessment, ANCOVA, and subgroup analyses. The results indicate a robust and positive correlation between (...) social and emotional abilities and standardized test scores. The regression evaluation demonstrates the ability of these skills to accurately predict academic achievement. The ANCOVA method finds socio-economic variables as the primary moderators. The evident existence of disparities, principally influenced by gender and grade level, highlights the necessity for interventions that are specifically tailored to address these variances. Proposed approaches include integrating comprehensive social and emotional learning activities into educational curricula, implementing targeted interventions to address socio-economic disparities, and implementing strategies customized to individual genders. Maintaining continuous surveillance and assessment is crucial for fostering a comprehensive academic environment. (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the 1950s it became apparent that antibiotics could not conquer all microbes, and a series of tests were developed to assess the susceptibility of microbes to antibiotics. This article explores the development and standardization of one such testing procedure which became dominant in the Nordic region, and how the project eventually failed in the late 1970s. The standardization procedures amounted to a comprehensive scheme, standardizing not only the materials used, but also the methods and the interpretation of the (...) results. Focusing on Sweden and Norway in particular, the article shows how this comprehensive standardization procedure accounted for several co-dependent factors and demanded collaboration within and across laboratories. Whereas literature on standardization has focused mostly on how facts and artefacts move within and across laboratories, I argue for the importance of also attending to regions and territories. More particularly, while arguing that the practices, ideals, and politics related to what have been called the “Nordic welfare state” were contributing to the design of the standardized procedure in the laboratory, I also argue that Scandinavia was drawn together as a unified region with and by these very same practices. (shrink)

I will argue in what follows, following the insights of James Marshall on busno‐cratic power, that resistance to this new power is already well underway, and that this resistance is potentially problematic and potentially transgressive 1 . The self is not only a chooser in busno‐cratic land, it is also re‐commodifying itself and in so doing, beginning to struggle at the limits of its commodified situation. I will argue that commodified selves, as much as they are constrained, are also potent (...) sites for resistance. Part of that resistance is being waged in the terrain of the high stakes test, where the self that could ‘choose’ runs headlong into a product that definitively limits its range of choice. In order to engage critically with this resistance, I examine the cracks in the monolithic power of testing, cracks that point to the uncertainty of numbers and the ambivalent anxieties of test takers. (shrink)

This is an ambitious book, dealing with an issue which deserves much greater attention from historians than it has received heretofore. Only the work of John Roach comes to mind as a precursor, dea...

Objectives: To test the range of beliefs regarding the ethics of testing, in resource poor settings, new therapies that are less efficacious but more affordable and feasible than the best current therapeutic standard. Design: Using a web-based survey, we presented a hypothetical scenario proposing to test a therapy for HIV disease ("therapeutic inoculation") known to be less efficacious than highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Respondents evaluated various trial designs as ethical or unethical. Participants: 604 subscribers to two listservs for individuals (...) interested in international health research ethics. Main outcome measures: Proportion of respondents endorsing trials testing this "substandard" therapy, and proportion endorsing placebo-controlled trials. Results: There were 215 respondents from 47 countries. Forty-five percent of respondents were from low or middle income countries; 96% devoted at least some time to research activities; and 75% had "some" or "considerable" research experience in developing countries. Of respondents, 97% (95% CI 94.7 to 99.4) endorsed testing therapeutic inoculation, without HAART, in patients with HIV disease; 86% (95% CI 81.4% to 90.7%) endorsed testing against placebo. Sixty-eight percent explicitly endorsed principles where the standard of care for subjects in clinical trials is determined by local, not universal, standards. There were no differences in responses based on respondent education-level or the income-level of their country of citizenship. Conclusion: There was broad agreement that a therapy of potential local benefit may be tested, even when that therapy is known to be inferior to the standard of care in wealthy countries. Most agreed that a placebo control may be used in some circumstances. (shrink)

A new analysis of the Best Interests Standard is given and applied to the controversy about testing children for untreatable, severe late-onset genetic diseases, such as Huntington's disease or Alzheimer's disease. A professional consensus recommends against such predictive testing, because it is not in children's best interest. Critics disagree. The Best Interests Standard can be a powerful way to resolve such disputes. This paper begins by analyzing its meaning into three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions showing it: is an "umbrella" (...) standard, used differently in different contexts, has objective and subjective features, is more than people's intuitions about how to rank potential benefits and risks in deciding for others but also includes evidence, established rights, duties and thresholds of acceptable care, and can have different professional, medical, moral and legal uses, as in this dispute. Using this standard, support is given for the professional consensus based on concerns about discrimination, analogies to adult choices, consistency with clinical judgments for adults, and desires to preserve of an open future for children. Support is also given for parents' legal authority to decide what genetic tests to do. (shrink)

The main foundations of the standard \CDM model of cosmology are that: the redshifts of the galaxies are due to the expansion of the Universe plus peculiar motions; the cosmic microwave background radiation and its anisotropies derive from the high energy primordial Universe when matter and radiation became decoupled; the abundance pattern of the light elements is explained in terms of primordial nucleosynthesis; and the formation and evolution of galaxies can be explained only in terms of gravitation within a inflation (...) + dark matter + dark energy scenario. Numerous tests have been carried out on these ideas and, although the standard model works pretty well in fitting many observations, there are also many data that present apparent caveats to be understood with it. In this paper, I offer a review of these tests and problems, as well as some examples of alternative models. (shrink)

The publication of a new ethics code for the American Psychological Association (1992), new guidelines (Committee on Ethical Guidelines for Forensic Psychologists, 1991), and two new versions of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (the MMPI-2, Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989; and the MMPI-A, Butcher et al., 1992) provide an opportunity to review ethical aspects of forensic assessment. Seven major issues-appropriate graduate training, competence in the use of standardized tests, using tests that fit the task, using (...) tests that fit the individual, administering tests correctly, using computers appropriately in forensic assessment, and assessing and reporting factors that may affect the meaning of test findings - are discussed. The revision of the MMPI is used to illustrate some of these issues. (shrink)

This paper explores “the peopling of Europe through data practices” in relation to standardized testing of students in Denmark. Programme for International Student Assessment is a central component of Danish and European education infrastructures. In Denmark, mediocre PISA results spurred the introduction of national testing. With inspiration from Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, this paper analyzes how complementary Danish national test assessment scales make up population objects and student subjects and how these scales are aligned with European and transnational (...) standards. A norm scale, standardized against the European Credit Transfer System grading scale, enacts a population whose performance can be tracked over time. A criteria scale introduces categories describing skills and enacts a moving student subject whose progression can be tracked. This paper argues that the three assessment scales enact the student population as bound to the nation and as simultaneously constituted in relation to transnational European categories and imaginaries of competition. As part of this, this paper discusses how the national test and PISA are used to single out students of non-European background, anticipated to be low PISA achievers and nonparticipants in a European knowledge economy. (shrink)

After 1900, the selective breeding of a few standard animals for research in the life sciences changed the way science was done. Among the pervasive changes was a transformation in scientists' assumptions about relationship between diversity and generality. Examination of the contents of two prominent physiology journals between 1885 and 1900, reveals that scientists used a diverse array of organisms in empirical research. Experimental physiologists gave many reasons for the choice of test animals, some practical and others truly comparative. But, (...) despite strong philosophical differences in the approaches they represented, the view that it was best to incorporate as many species as possible into research on physiological processes was widespread in both periodicals. Authors aimed for generality, but they treated it as a conclusion that would or would not follow from the examination of many species. After 1900, an increasing emphasis on standardization, the growth of the experimental method and the growing industrialization of the life sciences led to a decline in the number of species used in research. In this context, the selective breeding of animals for science facilitated a change in assumptions about the relationship between generality and diversity. As animals were increasingly viewed as things that were assumed to be fundamentally similar, scientific generality became an a priori assumption rather than an empirical conclusion. (shrink)

No computer that had not experienced the world as we humans had could pass a rigorously administered standard Turing Test. We show that the use of “subcognitive” questions allows the standard Turing Test to indirectly probe the human subcognitive associative concept network built up over a lifetime of experience with the world. Not only can this probing reveal differences in cognitive abilities, but crucially, even differences in _physical aspects_ of the candidates can be detected. Consequently, it is unnecessary to propose (...) even harder versions of the Test in which all physical and behavioral aspects of the two candidates had to be indistinguishable before allowing the machine to pass the Test. Any machine that passed the “simpler” symbols- in/symbols-out test as originally proposed by Turing would be intelligent. The problem is that, even in its original form, the Turing Test is already too hard and too anthropocentric for any machine that was not a physical, social, and behavioral carbon copy of ourselves to actually pass it. Consequently, the Turing Test, even in its standard version, is not a reasonable test for general machine intelligence. There is no need for an even stronger version of the Test. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo examine measurement agreement between a vocabulary test that is administered in the standardized manner and a version that is administered with a brain-computer interface.MethodThe sample was comprised of 21 participants, ages 9–27, mean age 16.7 years, 61.9% male, including 10 with congenital spastic cerebral palsy, and 11 comparison peers. Participants completed both standard and BCI-facilitated alternate versions of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - 4. The BCI-facilitated PPVT-4 uses items identical to the unmodified PPVT-4, but each quadrant forced-choice (...) item is presented on a computer screen for use with the BCI.ResultsMeasurement agreement between instruments was excellent, including an intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.98, and Bland-Altman plots and tests indicating adequate limits of agreement and no systematic test version bias. The mean standard score difference between test versions was 2.0 points.ConclusionThese results demonstrate that BCI-facilitated quadrant forced-choice vocabulary testing has the potential to measure aspects of language without requiring any overt physical or communicative response. Thus, it may be possible to identify the language capabilities and needs of many individuals who have not had access to standardized clinical and research instruments. (shrink)

Objective The establishment of patient-centered measures capable of empirically determining meaningful cognitive change after surgery can significantly improve the medical care of epilepsy patients. Thus, this study aimed to develop reliable change indices (RCIs) and standardized regression-based (SRB) change norms for a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery in the German language. Methods Forty-seven consecutive patients with temporal lobe epilepsy underwent neuropsychological assessments, both before and 12 months after surgery. Practice-effect-adjusted RCIs and SRB change norms for each test score were computed. (...) To assess their usefulness, the presented methods were applied to a clinical sample, and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to model the odds of achieving improvement in quality of life (QOL) after surgery. Results The determined RCIs at 90% confidence intervals and the SRB equations for each test score included in the test battery are provided. Cohen’s kappa analyses revealed a moderate mean agreement between the two measures, varying from slight to almost perfect agreement across test scores. Using these measures, a negative association between improvement in QOL and decline in verbal memory functions after surgery was detected (adjusted odds ratio = 0.09, p = 0.006). Significance To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to develop RCIs and SRB change norms necessary for the objective determination of neuropsychological change in a comprehensive test battery in the German language, facilitating the individual monitoring of improvement and decline in each patients’ cognitive functioning and psychosocial situations after epilepsy surgery. The application of the described measures revealed a strong negative association between improvement in QOL and decline in verbal memory functions after surgery. (shrink)

Standard test questions allow the questioner to confirm an answer as correct, displaying their greater epistemic authority over the answerer. But the instructional power of test questions may prompt their use even when that asymmetry is neutralized or reversed, and the recipient ought to know as much as, or indeed more than, the questioner. I describe how staff who support clients with intellectual impairment use what I call ‘recipient-side’ test questions, where the questioner claims final authority over matters in the (...) recipient’s experience, even though it is the recipient who has prior entitlement and access to it. When recipient-side test questions fail, questioners may revert to the standard test question asymmetry by hinting at, or openly asserting, their own epistemic authority. (shrink)

In recent decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has become a powerful forum for trade liberalization and regulatory harmonization. OECD members have worked to reconcile divergent national regulatory approaches, applying a single framework across sovereign states, in effect determining whose knowledge-making practices would guide regulatory action throughout the industrialized world. Focusing on US regulators, industry associations, and environmental groups, this article explores the participatory politics of OECD chemical regulation harmonization in the late 1970s to early 1980s. These efforts (...) were conditioned by differential institutional access and resources among stakeholders who sought to shape regulatory knowledge rules. Facing competing European and US approaches to chemical data—a minimum “base set” of test data versus case-by-case determinations—OECD members chose the European approach in 1980. However, US regulatory politics shifted with the election of President Reagan, prompting industry associations to lobby the US government to block the agreement. Examining the micropolitics of these standards in the making, I demonstrate that while long-term structures advantaged industrial actors, ideological alignment with the US government precipitated their decisive influence. The case illustrates the importance of attending to the distinctive politics of international harmonization and the effects on transnational knowledge-making and regulatory intervention. (shrink)

I provide an account of precision testing in particle physics that makes a virtue of theory-ladenness in experiments. Combining recent work on the philosophy of experimentation with a broader view of the scientific process allows one to understand that the most precise and secure knowledge produced in a mature science cannot be achieved in a theory-independent fashion. I discuss precision tests of the muon’s magnetic moment and effective field theory as a means to repurpose precision tests for exploratory (...) purposes. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 49-51.

This paper proposes a uniform method for constructing tests, confidence regions and point estimates which is called exact since it reduces to Fisher's so-called exact test in the case of the hypothesis of independence in a 2 × 2 contingency table. All the wellknown standard tests based on exact sampling distributions are instances of the exact test in its general form. The likelihood ratio and x2 tests as well as the maximum likelihood estimate appears as asymptotic approximations (...) to the corresponding exact procedures. (shrink)

: The purposes of this critical analysis are to clarify why high stakes testing reforms have become so prevalent in the United States and to explain the connection between current federal and state emphases on standardized testing reforms and educational opportunities. The article outlines the policy context for high stakes examinations, as well as the ideas of testing and accountability as major tenets of current education reform and policy. In partial explanation of the widespread acceptance and use of (...) class='Hi'>standardized tests in the United States, we argue that there is a pervasive testing culture, in addition to other contributing factors such as administrative utility, profit motives, and political ideology. Finally, we offer a critique of high stakes testing reforms in light of concerns about equality of educational opportunity. (shrink)

The genetic testing and screening of children has been fraught with controversy since Robert Guthrie developed the bacterial inhibition assay to test for phenylketonuria and advocated for rapid uptake of universal newborn screening in the early 1960s. Today with fast and affordable mass screening of the whole genome on the horizon, the debate about when and in what scenarios children should undergo genetic testing and screening has gained renewed attention. United States professional guidelines — both the American College of Medical (...) Genetics /American Society of Human Genetics statement and the American Academy of Pediatrics Statement on the genetic testing of children and the new AAP and ACMG joint policy statement and technical report — as well as the old UK guidelines by the Working Part of the Clinical Genetics Society and the new United Kingdom guidelines by the British Society of Human Genetics all give the same answer: genetic testing and screening should only be done if it is in the child’s best interest. (shrink)

Contemporary regulation of food safety incorporates principles of quality management and systemic performance objectives that used to characterize private standards. Conversely, private standards are covering ground that used to be the realm of regulation. The nature of the two is becoming increasingly indistinguishable. The case study of the Ugandan fish export industry highlights how management methods borrowed from private standards can be applied to public regulation to achieve seemingly conflicting objectives. In the late 1990s, the EU imposed repeated bans on (...) fish imported from Uganda on the basis of food safety concerns. However, the EU did not provide scientific proof that the fish were actually “unsafe.” Rather, the poor performance of Uganda’s regulatory and monitoring system was used as justification. Only by fixing “the system” and performing the ritual of laboratory testing for all consignments for export to the EU did the Ugandan industry regain its status as a “safe” source of fish. Yet, gaps and inconsistencies abound in the current Ugandan fish safety management system. Some operations are by necessity carried out as “rituals of verification.” Given the importance of microbiological tests and laboratories in the compliance system, “alchemic rituals” provide an appropriate metaphor. These rituals are part and parcel of a model that reassures the EU fish-eating public that all is under control in Uganda from boat to point of export. As a consequence, actual non-compliance from boat to landing site allows the fishery to survive as an artisanal operation. (shrink)

Apparently, I’m a righteous son of a bitch, morally speaking. At least that’s the conclusion I would have to reach if I trusted the results of a morality test I took at the BBC website (bbc.co.uk/labuk/experiments/morality). The test was devised to collect data for a “new theory” that seeks to make sense of human morality in terms of a super-organism concept. Briefly, the idea is that “we, as individuals, behave as if we are part of a bigger ‘superorganism’ when we (...) are organised into large social groups, as in cities or societies. ... all moral actions are based on the fundamental need to ‘police’ society in order to keep the ‘superorganism’ functioning properly.”. (shrink)

This article is an imaginary Socratic dialogue between J. S. Mill and Michel Foucault, principally concerning educational assessment.

I examine, from Mayo's severe testing perspective, the case found in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth report for the claim that increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations caused most of the post-1950 global warming. My examination begins to provide an alternative to standard, probabilistic assessments of OUR FAULT. It also brings out some of the limitations of variety of evidence considerations in assessing this and other hypotheses about the causes of climate change, and illuminates the epistemology of optimal (...) fingerprinting studies. Finally, it shows that some features of Mayo's perspective should be kept in whatever approach is preferred for assessing hypotheses about the causes of climate change. (shrink)