Objective Tests and Their Discriminating Power in Business Courses: a Case Study
Journal Title: BAR: Brazilian Administration Review - Year 2005, Vol 2, Issue 2
Abstract
Evaluating students’ learning experiences outcomes cannot be considered a simple task. This paper aims at investigating students’ overall performance and the discriminating power of particular tests’ items in the context of business courses. The purpose of this paper is to contribute with this issue while analyzing it, with scientific approach, from an accounting information systems standpoint: two experiments based on a database management system (DBMS) undergraduate course, involving 66 and 62 students (experiments E1 and E2, respectively). The discriminant analysis generated discriminant functions with high canonical correlations (E1= 0.898 and E2= 0.789). As a result, high percentages of original grouped cases were correctly classified (E1= 98.5% and E2= 95.2%) based on a relatively small number of items: 7 out of 22 items from E1 (multiple-choice), and 3 out of 6 from E2 (short-answer). So, with only a few items from the analyzed instruments it is possible to discriminate “good” or “bad” academic performance, and this is a measure of quality of the observed testing instruments. According to these findings, especially in business area, instructors and institutions, together, are able to analyze and act towards improving their assessment methods, to be of minimum influence while evaluating students’ performance.
Authors and Affiliations
Cornachione Jr, Edgard B.
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP40390
- DOI -
- Views 378
- Downloads 0
Top Human Resources Managers Views on Trade Union Action in Brazilian Corporations
This article presents the perception of human resource (HR) top managers at strategic level in Brazilian corporations regarding labor union activity. It is a quantitative study about the perception of 354 experienced HR...
Impacts of Interactive and Diagnostic Control System Use on the Innovation Process
This research explores the innovation process in organizations based on the Management Control System (MCS). We examined the link between the diagnostic and interactive uses of management control systems and their asso...
Interactions between Corporate Governance, Bankruptcy Law and Firms' Debt Financing: the Brazilian Case
This paper examines the relationship between corporate governance level and the bankruptcy law for such debt variables as firms’ cost of debt and amount (and variation) of debt. Our empirical results are consistent with...
On Social Enterprises and Social Entrepreneurship: An Extension
Research on social entrepreneurship still lacks theoretical depth, as well as the analysis of the antecedents that lead to the emergence of social enterprises. Seeking to advance such discussion, this paper aims to ana...
Methodological Reflections on Practice-Based Research in Organization Studies
This article aims to discuss methodological possibilities for empirical research on practice-based studies. From the small number of publications on research and methodological procedures on the study of practices, the...