Informal Definitions of Key Terms

Assessment – Any effort to gather, analyze, and interpret evidence that describes institutional, departmental, divisional, or agency effectiveness (Upcraft & Schuh).

Bias – Personal interest that may distort the final results of an investigation.

Construct – A concept inferred from patterns and themes in a given set of phenomena.

Constructivism – A form of knowledge which suggests that knowledge does not exist outside conceptions and creations of reality.

Correlation – A relationship between two or more measured variables presented in terms of direction and magnitude.

Criteria – The set of indicators, markers, guides, or a list of measures or qualities that will help you know when a student has met an outcome (Bresciani, Zelna, & Anderson).

Criterion-Based Measurement – A testing approach that compares an individual's score to a pre-specified standard.

Deductive Reasoning – A logical argument that shifts from general statements to specific conclusions.

Empirical – Research based on observation and verifiable by experimentation.

Epistemology – The study of knowledge; “how do we come to know?”

Evaluation – Any effort to use assessment evidence to improve institutional, departmental, divisional, or agency effectiveness (Upcraft & Schuh).

Experimental Research – Investigating cause-effect relationships by exposing one ore more experimental groups to a treatment and analyzing the results, often by comparison with a control group.

External Validity – The extent to which results can be generalized to populations beyond the sample studied.

Goals – Broad, general statements of what the program wants students to be able to do and to know or what the program will do to ensure what students will be able to do or know (Bresciani).

Hermeneutics – The formal study or theory of interpreting texts.

Hypothesis – A researcher's best guess, derived from theory, about the nature of the relationship to be investigated.

Inductive Reasoning – A process of thinking in which general principals are derived from specific instances.

Internal Validity – The extent to which results are accurate for the sample studied.

Iterative – The repetitive or cyclical nature of assessment (Bresciani, Zelna, & Anderson).

Measurement – The process of assigning scores to an attribute; identifiable.

Normative Measurement – A testing approach that compares an individual's score to the scores of a norming group.

Objectives – Broad, general statements of what the program wants students to be able to do and to know or what the program will do to ensure what students will be able to do or know (Bresciani).

Objectivity – Dealing with facts; truth is independent of (outside/beyond) the individual.

Ontology – The study of what it is to “be,” to really exist.

Outcomes – Specific, measureable descriptions of the end result of the educational program, typically presented in terms of what students should know or be able to do (Bresciani, Zelna, & Anderson).

Positivism – Knowledge based on the properties of and relationships between phenomena as verified by the empirical sciences.

Power – The degree to which a given design is likely to detect a significant relationship accurately.

Praxis – Research that seeks to unite theory with practice in a manner that is emancipatory.

Reliability – The likelihood that other researchers would arrive find similar results if they performed the same investigation.

Rubrics – An expansion of criteria…that defines in more detail the levels of achievement (Bresciani, Zelna, & Anderson).

Subjectivity –Dealing with values and feelings; truth depends on the mental state of the person making the statement; truth is that which is interpreted (created) by the individual.

Trustworthiness – Validity, truthfulness, meaningfulness, appropriateness, usefulness, etc. in qualitative research.

Type I Error – Rejecting a true hypothesis

Type II Error – Accepting a false hypothesis

Validity – Trustworthiness, truthfulness, meaningfulness, appropriateness, usefulness, etc. in quantitative research.

Variance – The degree to which scores deviate from the mean.