This paper addresses the scope for more integrated general analysis of diversity in science, technology and society. It proposes a framework recognizing three necessary but individually insufficient properties of diversity. Based on 10 quality criteria, it suggests a general quantitative non-parametric diversity heuristic. This allows the systematic exploration of diversity under different perspectives, including divergent conceptions of relevant attributes and contrasting weightings on different diversity properties. It is shown how this heuristic may be used to explore different possible trade-offs between diversity and other aspects of interest, including portfolio interactions. The resulting approach offers a way to be more systematic and transparent in the treatment of scientific and technological diversity in a range of fields, including conservation management, research governance, energy policy and sustainable innovation.

A General Framework for Analysing Diversity in Science, Technology and Society

Children’s behavioral self-regulation and executive function (EF; including attentional or cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control) are strong predictors of academic achievement. The present study examined the psychometric properties of a measure of behavioral self-regulation called the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) by assessing construct validity, including relations to EF measures, and predictive validity to academic achievement growth between prekindergarten and kindergarten. In the fall and spring of prekindergarten and kindergarten, 208 children (51% enrolled in Head Start) were assessed on the HTKS, measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory (WM), and inhibitory control, and measures of emergent literacy, mathematics, and vocabulary. For construct validity, the HTKS was significantly related to cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control in prekindergarten and kindergarten. For predictive validity in prekindergarten, a random effects model indicated that the HTKS significantly predicted growth in mathematics, whereas a cognitive flexibility task significantly predicted growth in mathematics and vocabulary. In kindergarten, the HTKS was the only measure to significantly predict growth in all academic outcomes. An alternative conservative analytical approach, a fixed effects analysis (FEA) model, also indicated that growth in both the HTKS and measures of EF significantly predicted growth in mathematics over four time points between prekindergarten and kindergarten. Results demonstrate that the HTKS involves cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control, and is substantively implicated in early achievement, with the strongest relations found for growth in achievement during kindergarten and associations with emergent mathematics.

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Predictors of Early Growth in Academic Achievement: The Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Task.

Applying the Rasch Model

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The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance

The present study explored the bidirectional and longitudinal associations between executive function (EF) and early academic skills (math and literacy) across 4 waves of measurement during the transition from preschool to kindergarten using 2 complementary analytical approaches: cross-lagged panel modeling and latent growth curve modeling (LCGM). Participants included 424 children (49% female). On average, children were approximately 4.5 years old at the beginning of the study (M = 4.69, SD = .30) and 55% were enrolled in Head Start. Cross-lagged panel models indicated bidirectional relations between EF and math over preschool, which became directional in kindergarten with only EF predicting math. Moreover, there was a bidirectional relation between math and literacy that emerged in kindergarten. Similarly, LGCM revealed correlated growth between EF and math as well as math and literacy, but not EF and literacy. Exploring the patterns of relations across the waves of the panel model in conjunction with the patterns of relations between intercepts and slopes in the LGCMs led to a more nuanced understanding of the relations between EF and academic skills across preschool and kindergarten. Implications for future research on instruction and intervention development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

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Examining the Relations between Executive Function, Math, and Literacy during the Transition to Kindergarten: A Multi-Analytic Approach.

Abstract. The degree to which test scores can support justified and fair decisions about demographically diverse participants has been an important aspect of educational and psychological testing for millennia. In the last 30 years, this aspect of measurement has come to be known as consequential validity, and it has sparked scholarly debate as to how responsible psychometricians should be for the fairness of the tests they create and how the field might be able to quantify that fairness and communicate it to applied researchers and other stakeholders of testing programs. Here, we formulate a relatively simple-to-calculate ratio coefficient that is meant to capture how well the scores from a given test can predict a criterion free from the undue influence of student demographics. We posit three example calculations of this Consequential Validity Ratio (CVR): one where the CVR is quite strong, another where the CVR is more moderate, and a third where the CVR is weak. We provide preliminary suggestions for interpreting the CVR and discuss its utility in instances where new tests are being developed, tests are being adapted to a new population, or the fairness of an established test has become an empirical question.

How Fair Is My Test?

The present study developed and validated a short form of the Cross-Cultural (Chinese) Personality Assessment Inventory for adolescents (CPAI-A; Form B) focusing on the personality scales by unidimensional and multidimensional Rasch models. Multiple evidence from unidimensional Rasch models (item fit, DIF statistics, dimensionality, reliability indices, construct coverage) were evaluated in order to create a short scale with optimal psychometric properties. Further, multidimensional Rasch model, canonical analysis, and predictive validity were performed and evaluated to validate the CPAI-A-SF further. As a result, 65 of 277 items were selected in the short measure with a four-dimensional structure. The infit and outfit mean-squares (MNSQ) of the personality scale items ranged between .81 and 1.25. Good construct coverage was displayed on the item-person map, and all four dimensions demonstrate reasonable EAP/PV reliability ranging from .81 to .87. The personality scores of CPAI-A-SF predicted life satisfaction as well as the scores from the original inventory.

Development of a Short Form of the CPAI-A (Form B) with Rasch Analyses.

Abstract Dynamic Measurement Modeling (DMM) is a recently-developed measurement framework for gauging developing constructs (e.g., learning capacity) that conventional single-timepoint tests cannot assess. The current project developed a person-specific DMM Trajectory Deviance Index (TDI) that captures the aberrance of an individual’s growth from the model-implied trajectory. Four TDI candidates were formulated, and two simulation studies were conducted to investigate the distributional properties and effectiveness of those four TDI candidates. Consequently, the best functioning index was determined as the final formulation of the TDI, to be recommended for use in DMM research. The data generation model in the simulation study was based on the parameter estimates from the Technology-enhanced, Research-based, Instruction, Assessment, and professional Development (TRIAD) cluster-randomized experiment data, which contains seven waves of mathematics test scores for students from preschool through Grade 5, and which has been modeled by DMM in previous research. In addition, an empirical study was also conducted to demonstrate the uses of the developed TDI within those real-world data. Incorporating TDI into DMM analysis strengthened the validity of score use and interpretation and offered a quantitative means of determining which students in the dataset were not adequately served by the dynamic measurement model.

Developing a Trajectory Deviance Index for Dynamic Measurement Modeling

Consequential validity (often referred to as “test fairness” in practice) is an essential aspect of educational measurement. This study evaluated the consequential validity of the Research-Based Early Mathematics Assessment (REMA). A sample of 627 children from PreK to second grade was collected using the short form of the REMA. We conducted two sets of analyses with different foci (item- or scale-level) for validation: differential item functioning (DIF) and consequential validity ratio (CVR) analyses. The analyses focused on the demographic subgroups of gender, English Language Learner status, and race/ethnicity. We found a low percentage of DIF items (less than 3%) and high CVRs (ranging from 96 to 98%). Both findings support the consequential validity and thus “fairness” of the REMA.

Evaluating the Consequential Validity of the Research-Based Early Mathematics Assessment

BACKGROUND When students generate ideas, important inter-individual variance exists both in the quantity and the quality of ideas they are able to produce (e.g., perfectionists who have few highly creative ideas or mass producers who produce a lot of uncreative ideas). In educational psychology research on creativity, the relation between the quantity and quality of ideas has not been well understood, limiting progress in this area. AIMS We conceptualized Ideational Fluency as a phenomenon that requires participants to 'survive' to produce more ideas, and where dropping out of the ideational process was analogous to 'dying'. Using this novel paradigm, we aimed to test the relations among Fluency (as a dependent variable); and creative Expertise, Originality and self-reported Personality attributes (as independent variables). SAMPLE AND METHOD Participants were drawn from three groups: those with demonstrated expertise in stage or screen acting (n = 104); undergraduates being trained in the same domain (n = 100), and adults with no acting training or experience (n = 92). Participants responded to the Alternate Uses Task; Non-parametric and semi-parametric survival models were fit to their Ideational Fluency; and average and maximum Originality scores, as well as self-reported Personality attributes, were used as covariates. RESULTS Across all participants, the Ideational Fluency survival function showed an S-shape, but the Expertise grouping interacted with that pattern. The survival rate of professional actors decreased more rapidly during the first few ideas, but after the 5th idea, professional actors displayed a clear advantage in survival rate. Participants who were less original on average but who showed a high maximum Originality, as well as those participants who reported more Assertiveness and less Industriousness, also survived further into the Ideational process. CONCLUSIONS Contrary to our hypothesis, professional actors' advantage in Fluency did not manifest in the survival model until after the 5th idea generated. A quantity-quality trade-off was observed with average Originality being associated with shorter survival, but that trade-off was not observed with maximum Originality, which was associated with longer survival.

Yixiao Dong

Papers

How Fair Is My Test?

Development of a Short Form of the CPAI-A (Form B) with Rasch Analyses.

Developing a Trajectory Deviance Index for Dynamic Measurement Modeling

Evaluating the Consequential Validity of the Research-Based Early Mathematics Assessment

Understanding ideational fluency as a survival process.