Chuck Secolsky
The focus of this study was students' thought processes underlying their responses to questions on a statistics exam. Two innovative measurement procedures were used to study the underlying processes:
In many parts of the United States and the world, there exists large scale innumeracy. From interviewing students placed into developmental skills classes at New York area community colleges, student misconceptions in solving fraction and decimal problems were identified. A much larger group of approximately 500 students were then asked to solve each computational item and also choose strategies they believed were correct. Item Response Theory (IRT) based on logistic modeling allowed for the sample-free calibration of the psychometric characteristics of the items.
