Tools Measuring Academic Skills and Performance, Essay Example

Psychology Assignment: Scales used in Measuring Children

Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, 1967, was designed to measure self-esteem in children. Ryden modified it for use in adults in 1978. Self-esteem refers to a person’s evaluation of their attributes and abilities. It includes an individual’s personality aspects that one is aware. There are four factors that contribute to one’s self-esteem. These include significance, virtue, competence and power. Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory has 25 item short form using variants of Cattell’s Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire and Eysenck’s Personality Inventory on a Lie scale. Each of 25 items was associated with social conformity, extraversion, and emotional stability. The validity and reliability of the Coopersmith instruments appears to be highly correlated with academic achievement, sociometric status, and teacher behavior ratings in the United States. Although there is some concerns with culture specific in other developing countries.  According to the studies, the administration of the Coopersmith instruments was administered along with other psychological assessment test such as California Test of Personality to which the scores for Coopersmith instruments appeared to be under the impression of confusion and unreliable (Francis, 1997).

Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory on children tells a lot about children despite having attracting some criticism. Children who possess positive self-esteem are considered imaginative, assertive, able to take leadership roles, confident in own abilities and judgments, have less self-preoccupation and can dedicate much of their time to themselves and others. Those children with negative self-esteem are described or considered quiet, unoriginal, lacking in initiative, unobtrusive, doubtful about themselves and withdrawn. Because of being a vocational choice, academic achievement and school progress are influenced by self-esteem.

Self-esteem development begins early with children as young as 18 months showing aspects of self-esteem. Research also shows that parents’ self-esteem influences the self-esteem of their children. Children with high self-esteem often have parents with high self-esteem.

The behavior assessment for children consists of contemporary cognitive and traditional behavioral approaches. It is a multidimensional and multimethod assessment tool. Initially, it was designed to evaluate children and adolescent psychological problems. The ages targeted were 2.5 and 18-year olds. The tool has also been used with young adults to the age of twenty-five. Behavior assessment system for children gathers information from the view of the child, parent, and teacher. The tool has five components, which can be used separately or in combination. A research study examined the BASC-2 items and explained of its psychometric properties that measure the child’s behavior and functioning in the environment where relevant. The purpose of BASC-2 is to classify the child’s emotional and behavioral disorders and to design a treatment plan in regards to the clinical diagnoses of DSM-IV-TR.  This type of assessment is targeting to the students with vision or hearing impairments, program evaluation, forensic evaluation and research. The BASC-2 contains five components: a Teacher Rating Scale (TRS), a Parent Rating Scale (PRS), a student Self-Report of Personality (SRP), a Structured Developmental History (SDH), and a Student Observation System (SOS).  Some of the items of BASC-2 were changed to the “content scales” as an intention to interpret more detailed clinical norms, improved software, and minor improvement in the SDH. On the BASC-2, a 4-point response scale is used to score the t-score, percentile ranks on the two rating scales (TRS and PRS) and the self reporting measure (SRP). The concurrent validity with SRP show much better correlations to the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) which places on moderate level for both the Child and Adolescent samples (.35 to .41), respectively (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1992).

BASC-2 is a useful tool in educational classification of different child behavioral and emotional disorders as articulated by The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 1997. BASC-2 also helps in identification of a child’s positive attributes, which can be valuable information for treatment planning.

Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement is an academic achievement tests measure, which measures particular academic skills. It compares a child’s academic skills with that of other children of the same age level or who are at the same grade. It measures a child’s achievement for children in grades 1 through 12. K-TEA focuses on broad reading, math, writing and oral language skills. It also considers various aspects of broad areas. There are two forms of K-TEA: Comprehensives and Brief. The brief from focuses on reading, spelling and math while the comprehensive form focuses on reading, comprehension and decoding, mathematical computation and applications, and spelling. The test is conducted in an individualized environment with the child and examiner. The examiner only helps the student stay focused to complete the test. K-TEA differs from classroom assessments, which measure particular skills that have previously been taught because it measures basic academic skills of the child. Average range of scores is between 90 and109, in most children. Scores of the academic achievement measures are often similar to cognitive ability scores of a child. Extremely low scores compared to cognitive potential may mean a learning disability. The KTEA-11 constructs academic components using the standardization process according to the13-page manual. The scoring process is by pencil calculate the scores by hand because some of the components use oral language composite and phonological. Therefore, the manual have definition of reading and language literature and written feedbacks. The rationale for the reading composite is difficult to measure because there are some designs that are not measured on global scale. However, examiners are required to be familiar with the materials including student response forms, separate stimulus cards, a puppet, and a CD player. Each rule is different for each subtest (Kaufman, et .al 1985).

Crucial assessments worth learning

Basic Achievement Skills Inventory refer to a set of norm-reverenced tests, which help in measuring math, language skills and reading for adults and children. The test also results in criterion-referenced data. The BASI series helps in showing a comprehensive academic skill evaluation by providing both comprehensive and survey versions. These convenient tests produce standard scores, grade equivalency, age equivalency national percentile rankings, and performance classification by learning objective. A researcher’s evaluation purpose determines whether he or she uses the comprehensive or the survey version. The measurement scale almost corresponds to K-TEA. However, it differs in that it yields criterion-referenced information. The comprehensive version applies in measuring progress, diagnosing learning disabilities and in the understanding of particular areas of weakness and strength at detailed level. The survey version is used in screening for academic strengths and weaknesses and to accurately determine overall academic achievement in math and verbal skills.

Administration of assessments is easy in terms of Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, Basic Assessment for children 2 and Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement 2. The measurement methods do not involve a strain on the one administering the tests. In fact, the teacher who is in most cases the one administering the tests only ensures attentiveness of the student to complete the test.

The interpretation of scores is challenging in the assessments. Interpretation requires an in-depth understanding of statistical results such as the standard deviation and the various errors that need to be corrected.

References

Francis, L. J. (1997). Coopersmith’s Model of Self-Esteem: Bias Toward the Stable Extravert?. Journal Of Social Psychology, 137(1), 139-142.

Kaufman, A. S., & Kaufman, N. L. (1985). Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement–Second Edition, Comprehensive Form.

Reynolds, C. R., & Kamphaus, R. W. (1992). Behavior Assessment System for Children [Second Edition].