SPECIALIZED ACHIEVEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION (RELATION BETWEEN ADVANCED AND PROFILE TESTS OF THE GRADUATE RECORD EXAMINATION)

53 Pages·01.785 MB·English

by  BEARDSLEY, SEYMOUR WILLIS

SPECIALIZED ACHIEVEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION
(Relation Between Advanced and Profile
Tests of the Graduate Record Examination)
Seymour W illis Beardsley
Submitted in partial fulfillm ent of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Faculty of Pure Science,
Columbia University
1950
Acknowledgment
The generous and patient counsel of Professor H.E. Garrett
is gratefully acknowledged. The author is also grateful for the
cooperation of the Graduate Record Office, which made this study
possible. Among the many individuals in this office who as­
sisted by giving their time and personal cooperation, we are
especially indebted to Dr. G.7. Lannholm, Mr. C.R. Langmuir,
Dr. Henry Channcey, Mr. Frederick Lord, Mr. Paul Burke and
Mrs. Mary Scheider.
Contents
Page
I Introduction and' Statement of the Problem . . . 1
II Definition of the Problem .................... . 0 . 0 0 . 3
III Literature ........................ 5
IV Plan of Present Research ..............................13
Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Relevant Information Concerning the
G.R.E. Advanced and Profile Tests . . . . 18
V Results and Discussion ..................................................... 21
VI Conclusions . . o . . » . ................................................ 43
References 48
SPECIALIZED ACHIEVEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION
(Relation Between Advanced and Profile
Tests of the Graduate Record Examination)
I. Introduction and Statement of the Problem
In the field of educational measurement, the Advanced Tests
of the Graduate Record Examination * occupy a unique position.
Among all the measures of achievement employed in higher education,
these tests alone combine the following characteristics:
1) They embrace a wide range of topics, each test differentiated
from the others according to the classification of subjects
usually found in higher education (Mathematics, Philosophy,
Geology, etc.)
2) They are standardized, objective-type examinations.
3) They are designed to be comprehensive within each subject area.
*0 "They are particularly designed to test the student in his
field of concentration" (3)• — his "major" field . (The
tests are most appropriately administered to college seniors
and first-year graduate students, having been standardized on
the latter.)
Further appreciation of the purpose and function of the
Advanced Tests is derived from a comparison between them and the
* Henceforth referred to as "G.R.E."
- 2. -
Profile Tests of G.R.E. The Profile Tests, as a hattery, constitute
a "general examination" for use in higher education. Their content
is elementary as compared to that of the Advanced Tests, representing
less specific, detailed knowledge. "The difficulty of the (Profile)
questions has "been carefully graded so that the tests w ill be appro­
priate to discriminate among all the students in the group examined
without regard to their course credit in the subjects" (3). The
Advanced Tests, on the other hand, "begin on a higher level of dif­
ficulty and extend to a level of difficulty appropriate to honors
students who have majored in the subject". The Advanced Tests are
also greater in length.
Whereas there axe twenty Advanced Tests, at this writing,
representing twenty specific subject-matter field s, there are only
eight Profile Tests, seven of which represent elementary and general
knowledge of basic subject-matter field s. These are Mathematics,
Physics, Chemistry, Biological Science, Social Studies (History,
Government, and Economics), Literature, and Pine Arts. The eighth
test in the form employed in this study is the Verbal Pactor Test.
Insofar as abstract intelligence is verbal, this test may be con­
sidered a measure of such intelligence. It is described as measur­
ing "vocabulary, reading, and language comprehension (accuracy of
discrimination in word meanings)'!.
The G.R.E. program, as outlined above, thus represents
the typical curricular organization of higher education: general
education, in which a range of subjects is "surveyed"; and specialized
education, in which a relatively large amount of attention is given to
one field of study—the student's "major". Under the heading of general
education, a student may take one or two courses each in Chemistry, Math-
- 3 -
ematics, History, etc., whereas in his major field of study he may
take half a dozen or more courses. The specialized training, as
compared to the general, represents more thorough comprehension,
greater concentration, and more advanced academic achievement.
The specific problem of this study is to analyze the relationship
between Advanced Tests and Profile Tests of the Graduate Record
Examination.
Our problem grows out of the need for knowledge of how
the general education contributes to the specialized. How does
achievement in the general aspect of higher education relate to achieve­
ment in the specialized, advanced aspect? Through the G.R.E. tests
we are afforded a unique opportunity to investigate this question.
Grades in college courses were unavailable for this study. It is doubt­
ful whether these indices of achievement would be as valid as the
G.R.E. tests, because of lack of uniformity in grading systems.
II. Definition of the Problem
The relationship between general and specialized achieve­
ment is a fundamental part of a larger problem—evaluation. College
and university administrators must evaluate academic achievement for
several purposes. Among the most frequent and typical of these is
admission of students to graduate programs. Other purposes are:
(1) Comparison and appraisal of the effectiveness of undergraduate
and graduate curricula, with respect to a particular institution or
group of institutiohs; (2) educational and vocational counseling of
individual students, in terms of strengths and weaknesses in preparation
h
- _
for further training. Aside from providing an approach to such
practical problems of evaluation, this study is expected to shed
some light on the more theoretical question of essential relation­
ship between general and specialized achievement, as found in higher
education.
By way of illustrating the practical problems, let us
assume that we are to evaluate the qualifications of applicants for
graduate training in Chemistry. Each applicant has in his record
numerous measures of past achievement, including measures of under­
graduate achievement in Chemistry. Undoubtedly the latter measures
are most significant in the evaluation, but what significance, if
any, should be attached to the remaining measures? What weights
should be given to achievements in Physics, Mathematics, Biology,
English, etc.?
In evaluating achievement for admission to graduate
Chemistry, the data with which we are concerned consist of scores
on the G-.E.E. Advanced Test in Chemistry and the eight Profile
Tests. The first measure of interest is the Advanced Chemistry,
which we accept as the best criterion of achievement indicative of
preparation for graduate training in this field . How do the other
tests relate to it? What sort of statistical prediction of the
Advanced-Test performance can be obtained from the Profile battery?
Which Profile Tests contribute, and in what degree, to this prediction?
The practical significance of this question is perhaps
most readily seen in interpreting the test scores of an individual.
Ordinarily, the individual's level of performance on the Advanced
- 5 -
lest w ill "be roughly paralleled by level of performance on the Profile
Tests which have been found to be the best predictors of the Advanced
Test. But in those cases where considerable discrepancies exist,
the administrator w ill be in a position to look for explanations.
III. Literature
The researches most pertinent to our problem are those
which make use of G.R.E. data. Reseai’ch bearing upon G.R.E. may
be divided into four main categories:
A. Reports of inter-relation shins among the sub.ject-matter
fields in general achievement. This concerns inter­
correlations within the Profile battery.
B. Reports of relationships between general achievement
and specialized achievement. This is directly within
the area of the present problem.
C. Factor analyses applied to college achievement.
The emphasis here is on problems of "mental organization" —
the discovery of essential or primary factors in the Pro­
file battery.
D. Predictions, from G.R.E., of future academic achieve­
ment in graduate training.
A. Reports of inter-relationships among sub.ject-matter
fields, in general achievement.
Inter-correlations among the Profile Tests, for various
groups, arc reported by the Office of the Graduate Record Examination (3)«
The groups represented are as follows: Men — l) sophomores and
2) seniors in eastern literal-arts colleges, 3) first-year graduates
in eastern graduate schools, 4) first-year graduates in midwestern
graduate schools; Women — l) seniors in eastern liheral-arts
colleges; 2) first-year graduates in eastern graduate schools.
These groups are fxirther refined on the basis of major field , That
is, within each of the above groups there are sub-groups according
to the "major field of concentration" (undergraduate) of the student.
The size of the sample for these groupings by major field ranges
from 7^ to 756.
The intercorrelations of the Profile Tests for majors in
various fields are almost all positive. On the other hand, negative
intercorrelations are quite frequent for larger groups when taken with­
out reference to major field of study. (The larger groups include
more cases than the totals of the groups by major field ). The cor­
relations between Profile Chemistry and the other Profile Tests,
when listed for eight different major fields (total N = 836), reveal
no negative r*s. But when the same correlations are given for
"all major fields", a total of 1525 first-year graduate men, eastern
graduate schools, Profile Chemistry correlates - ,136, -.218, and
-.132 with Profile Social Studies, Literature and Pine Arts, respect­
ively. Por 98 majors in Biological Science, the r between Profile
Chemistry and Profile Social Studies is .517, which is the highest
between Profile Chemistry and any of the three Profile Tests mentioned
above. Among the 23 remaining r's (Profile Chemistry vs. Social
Studies, literature and Fine Arts) for the "major" groups, four are
- 7 -
above .30 and two between .20 and .30 It is apparent that the
major fidld of study may have an effect upon the Profile inter-r*s.
Sex differences in the Profile correlation coefficients
are similar to the major field s, except that they are somewhat less
pronounced. As in the case of major field s, the writer has found
significant differences in the published data of the G.R.E. The
conclusion is warranted that, when investigating types of college
achievement, the sex factor must be accounted for.
A study by Pease (5) provides information as to the
stability of the intercorrelation pattern of the Profile battery
throughout the four years of undergraduate training. Each of
her 380 subjects was tested twice by the Profile Tests. Of this
group, 66 men were tested in their freshmen and sophomore years,
67 men in their sophomore and junior years, 62 men in their junior
and senior years, 104 men in their sophomore and senior years, and
81 women in their sophomore and senior years. All testings were
in the spring of the year. Profile intercorrelations did not sys­
tematically increase or decrease, but remained quite consistent from
testing to testing.
At the same time, there was a general increase in mean
scores from first to second testing. Of forty differences between
means (eight tests taken twice by five groups), thirty-three dif­
ferences were both positive and significant at the .01 level.
Of the remaining seven, four differences Mere negative (loss be­
tween first and second testing).
Among various testing programs, that closest to G.R.E.
in purpose and general character is to be found in the work of the