Open AccessREPORT OF A STUDY OF THE CONTENT OF THREE GRE ADVANCED TESTS
Author(s) -
DeVore Richard,
McPeek Miles
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
ets research report series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.235
H-Index - 5
ISSN - 2330-8516
DOI - 10.1002/j.2330-8516.1985.tb00091.x
Subject(s) - representativeness heuristic , curriculum , content (measure theory) , test (biology) , relevance (law) , content analysis , mathematics education , psychology , inference , pedagogy , computer science , mathematics , sociology , social science , social psychology , political science , mathematical analysis , paleontology , law , biology , artificial intelligence
This paper reports the findings from content studies of three GRE Advanced Tests: Biology, Literature in English, and Political Science. The studies were designed to indicate the degree to which the content specified for and included in recent test forms for these fields is representative of the content actually taught in the undergraduate curricula in the fields. The studies provided substantively useful information concerning the content representativeness of the tests. Informed judgments were relied on as the technique for assessing the representativeness of the content. Groups of college and university faculty knowledgeable in curricular practices at the undergraduate level were asked to make judgments about the relationship between curriculum and test content by examining both individual test questions and the content specifications for the tests. By inference, within the error limits of the judgments, an assessment of the relevance of test content to undergraduate curricula was obtained. Although the studies supply evidence that the content of each of the tests generally is representative of the content of the respective undergraduate curricula, modest differences of opinion were found among the respondents in the Biology and Political Science studies as to the degree of emphasis that should be given to certan subareas of the content.