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Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance
by James R. Morrow, Dale P. Mood, James G. Disch and Minsoo Kang
Published by: Human Kinetics
Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide, leads students through the fundamentals of collecting and analyzing data of human performance and applying their results to real-life situations. Focusing on the core concepts of reliability and validity of data, the text provides all the necessary tools for evidence-based decision making that can be applied to physical therapy, allied health professions, kinesiology, sport and exercise science, physical education, health, and fitness.
The fifth edition of Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance provides students with a logical progression of information in a straightforward manner. Introductory algebraic concepts are combined with the technological capabilities of Microsoft Excel and IBM’s Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to aid students in calculations and data analysis. The text expands on previous editions and includes the following enhancements:
• Additional sport-specific and exercise examples, as well as physical education examples focusing on motor skill abilities and psychological skills, that provide real-world application of the material
• Updated examples for use and practice with Excel and SPSS calculations and techniques that illustrate data analyses
• Expanded emphasis on evidence-based decision making to guide students in making appropriate decisions
• 52 video interviews of top researchers who offer greater insight into the field as students work through the text
The text is divided into four easy-to-follow parts. Part I introduces the concepts of measurement and evaluation and their importance to decision making in human performance with specific attention to applications of measurement, testing, and evaluation. Part II explores statistics as core tools and resources for these evaluations and decisions and explains the various forms of statistical procedures often used in measurement. Part III takes the skills gained from parts I and II and extends them into applied issues in human performance, such as evaluating a person’s aerobic capacity or muscular strength. The importance of reliability and validity in data is also covered in detail. Part IV provides information on practical applications that apply all of the information from the previous sections.
Learning aids for this text, including a robust and newly updated web study guide with activities and questions for active learning and engagement, enhance student comprehension and retention. Chapter objectives highlight main points that students should focus on throughout the chapters, and key terms are highlighted and defined in the glossary. Mastery Items include problems and activities that test student knowledge, while Measurement and Evaluation Challenge sidebars provide scenarios that can be tackled with the information gathered throughout the chapter. Additional data sets for each chapter are also provided in the web study guide for practice and mastery of techniques in Excel and SPSS. To aid instructors, Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition, includes a suite of ancillary materials: instructor guide, presentation package plus image bank, test package, chapter quizzes, and instructor videos.
Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition, continues to provide students with the tools and confidence they will need to gather reliable data, analyze it, and apply it in their work with clients. With its emphasis on understanding and applying sound measurement techniques, this fifth edition prepares students and professionals to identify problems and make solid decisions in the realm of human performance.
Part I. Introduction to Tests and Measurements in Human Performance
Chapter 1. Concepts in Tests and Measurements
Nature of Measurement and Evaluation
Purposes of Measurement, Testing, and Evaluation
Domains of Human Performance
Summary
Chapter 2. Using Technology in Measurement and Evaluation
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Using SPSS
Downloading Data Matrices
Summary
Part II. Basic Statistical Concepts
Chapter 3. Descriptive Statistics and the Normal Distribution
Scales of Measurement
Summation Notation
Reporting Data
Central Tendency
Distribution Shapes
Variability
Standard Scores
Normal-Curve Areas (z Table)
Summary
Chapter 4. Correlation and Prediction
Correlation Coefficient
Calculating r
Prediction
Multiple Correlation or Multiple Regression
Summary
Chapter 5. Inferential Statistics
Hypothesis Testing
Independent and Dependent Variables
Overview of Hypotheses Testing and Inferential Statistics
Selected Statistical Tests
Summary
Part III. Reliability and Validity Theory
Chapter 6. Norm-Referenced Reliability and Validity
Reliability
Validity
Applied Reliability and Validity Measures
Estimating Agreement Between Measures
Summary
Chapter 7. Criterion-Referenced Reliability and Validity
Developing Criterion-Referenced Standards
Development of Criterion-Referenced Testing
Statistical Analysis of CRTs
Statistical Techniques to Use With CRTs
CRT Examples
Applying Criterion-Referenced Standards to Epidemiology
Summary
Part IV. Human Performance Applications
Chapter 8. Developing Written Tests and Surveys
Planning the Test
Constructing and Scoring the Test
Administering the Test
Analyzing the Test
Item Analysis
Sources of Written Tests
Questionnaires
Summary
Chapter 9. Physical Fitness and Activity Assessment in Adults
Health-Related Physical Fitness
Establishing the Risk for Fitness Testing
Measuring Aerobic Capacity
Measuring Body Composition
Measuring Muscular Strength and Endurance
Measuring Flexibility
Health-Related Fitness Batteries
Physical Fitness Assessment in Older Adults
Older Adult Fitness Battery
Special Populations
Measuring Physical Activity
Certification Programs
Summary
Chapter 10. Physical Fitness and Activity Assessment in Youth
Allen W. Jackson
Health-Related Fitness and Motor Fitness
Norm-Referenced Versus Criterion-Referenced Standards
Normative Data
Youth Fitness Test Batteries
Fitnessgram
Variable Standards in Youth Fitness Tests
Enhancing Reliable and Valid Fitness Test Results With Children
Special Children
Institute of Medicine Recommendations for Youth Fitness Assessment
Measuring Physical Activity in Youth
Summary
Chapter 11. Assessment of Sport Skills and Motor Abilities
Allen W. Jackson
Guidelines for Sport Skills and Motor Performance Tests
Effective Testing Procedures
Developing Psychomotor Tests
Issues in Skills Testing
Skills Test Classification
Testing Motor Abilities
Purposes of Human Performance Analysis
Sport Analytics
Summary
Chapter 12. Psychological Measurements in Sports and Exercise
Robert S. Weinberg and Joseph F .Kerns
Sport Psychology: Performance Enhancement and Mental Health
Trait Versus State Measures
General Versus Sport-Specific Measures
Cautions in Using Psychological Tests
Quantitative Versus Qualitative Measurement
Scales Used in Sport Psychology
Psychological Skills
Scales Used in Exercise Psychology
General Psychological Scales Used in Sport and Exercise
Summary
Chapter 13. Classroom Grading: A Summative Evaluation
Evaluations and Standards
Process of Grading
Determining Instructional Objectives
Consistency in Grading
Grading Mechanics
Summary
Chapter 14. Performance-Based Assessment: Alternative Ways to Assess Student Learning
Jacalyn L. Lund
Impetus for Developing a New Type of Assessment
Types of Performance-Based Assessment
Establishing Criteria for Performance-Based Assessments
Subjectivity: A Criticism of Performance-Based Assessments
Selecting Appropriate Performance-Based Assessments
Issues to Consider When Developing Performance-Based Assessments
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
Summary
James R. Morrow, Jr., PhD, is a regents professor emeritus in the department of kinesiology, health promotion, and recreation at the University of North Texas at Denton. Morrow regularly teaches courses in measurement and evaluation in human performance. He has authored more than 150 articles and chapters on measurement and evaluation, physical fitness, physical activity, and computer use and has made approximately 300 professional presentations. He has also conducted significant research using the techniques presented in the text.
Morrow served as president of the National Academy of Kinesiology and as chair of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports Science Board. He has received research funding from the United States Olympic Committee, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Cooper Institute. He is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM); the National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK); and the North American Society of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport and Dance Professionals. He is also a research fellow of SHAPE America. Morrow has chaired the AAHPERD Measurement and Evaluation Council and is a recipient of that council’s Honor Award. He has produced four fitness-testing software packages, including the AAHPERD Health-Related Physical Fitness test, and was editor in chief of Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport from 1989 to 1993. He was the founding coeditor of the Journal of Physical Activity and Health. He enjoys playing golf, reading, traveling, and spending time with his grandchildren.
Dale P. Mood, PhD, is a professor emeritus and former associate dean of arts and sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Mood has taught measurement and evaluation, statistics, and research methods courses since 1970 and has published extensively in the field, including 47 articles and 6 books. He has been a consultant to five NFL football teams and chair of the Measurement and Evaluation Council of AAHPERD, and he is a former president of AAALF. He is a reviewer for Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science, and Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. In his leisure time, Mood enjoys reading, officiating summer league swimming meets, traveling, following the activities of his 17 grandchildren, and participating in a variety of physical activities.
James G. Disch, PED, is an associate professor in the sport management department at Rice University. From 1986 to 1991 he was master of Richardson College at Rice. From 1995 to 2001 he was chair of the kinesiology department. Disch has authored numerous articles, chapters, manuals, and texts in the areas of applied measurement, prediction in sport, and applied sport science. A member of AAHPERD (now SHAPE America) since 1974, he has been chair, secretary, and advisory board member of the measurement and evaluation council of AAHPERD. He was vice president of the college division of TAHPERD and had numerous section chair appointments. Disch is also a reviewer for Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport and Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.
Disch has coordinated several workshops and symposia on measurement and evaluation. He was a major contributor to the development of AAHPERD health-related fitness norms in 1980 and has worked as a consultant and advisor for Olympic and professional teams. In 1999 he received the National Measurement and Evaluation Council Honor Award, and in 2011 he was named a Sport Ethics Fellow of the Year by the International Institute of Sport and the Positive Coaching Alliance. He was named the TAHPERD Scholar for 2012.
Dr. Disch served on the board of the RBI Foundation (Recycled Baseball Items) from 2009 until 2014 and is the current chair of the Houston chapter of the Positive Coaching Alliance. He is also on the local planning committee for the Joe Niekro Foundation Knuckleball.
Disch earned his PED in biomechanics and measurement from Indiana University in 1973.
Minsoo Kang, PhD, is a professor in the department of health and human performance at Middle Tennessee State University. He received his PhD in kinesmetrics (measurement and evaluation) in kinesiology with emphasis in IRT, Rasch, and psychometrics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kang’s research has focused on measurement and statistical methods and their applications to assessments of physical activity and sedentary behavior. He has published more than 70 refereed journal articles, made 9 book contributions, and presented more than 200 research projects. He teaches courses on data analysis, research methods, meta-analysis, research seminar, and current measurement issues in human performance. He enjoys playing badminton, golf, and tennis.
Kang is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and a research fellow of SHAPE America. He has chaired the AAHPERD Measurement and Evaluation Council and is a recipient of that council’s Honor Award. Kang received the Distinguished Research Award at Middle Tennessee State University. He currently is an associate editor of the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sports, a section editor of Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise Science, and a member of the editorial board for those journals.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
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Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Using Computers to Analyze Data
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure.
Computer technology is now pervasive in schools and businesses. Many schools and businesses require students and employees to be computer literate - able to interact with computers daily for work and pleasure. Some universities require students to have personal computers, whereas others actually give them to students when they pay tuition. Computers have such a big influence in our daily lives (they're involved in everything from grocery shopping and banking to using the telephone) that we have to be able to use them. Computer literacy does not require one to be a computer programmer; one simply needs to be able to use computers in daily life, for example, to conduct daily tasks or for enjoyment (e.g., surfing the Internet).
Exercise scientists and physical educators must make many measurement and evaluation decisions that involve numbers, which computers are particularly adept at handling. Because the exercise and human performance professions require daily use of computers, you must familiarize yourself with their features and uses specific to your field so that you can understand and use the concepts presented in this text. Many of the decisions that you will make in your field require data analysis. Thus, we will introduce you to SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics), a powerful data analysis program that will help you save, retrieve, and analyze much of the measurement and evaluation data that you will encounter daily.
SPSS makes number crunching fast, efficient, and almost painless. For example, the most important characteristics of any test are its reliability and validity. As you will learn in chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7, computers can generate data related to reliability and validity in a matter of seconds. This will be illustrated throughout the textbook. Many statistics can help you make valid decisions. Chapters 3 through 14 provide you with many opportunities to practice using SPSS in scenarios similar to those you will encounter in your profession.
Additionally, we present information about how to create databases with Microsoft Excel. These Excel databases can be easily read with SPSS. The benefit of creating your database with Excel is that it is readily available on computers. Thus, you could create your database while at home and then conduct the analysis with SPSS. We provide more information for Excel users in the appendix. You will learn more about that as you read through chapter 2.
Measurement uses for a computer in human performance, kinesiology, and physical education include the following:
- Accessing the Internet to obtain information relative to your specific job responsibilities. Whether seeking normative strength measures for your personal trainer clients, researching reports regarding the most effective modality for treating patients in your PT clinic, or accessing health and fitness data from large scale populations, you will use the Internet on a nearly daily basis once you have completed your training and entered your professional career.
- Determining test reliability and validity. Statistics learned in chapters 3, 4, and 5 can be used to estimate the reliability (consistency) and validity (truthfulness) of test results in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. SPSS examples are provided in chapters 3 through 14.
- Evaluating cognitive test results and physiological test performance. Computers can help evaluate and report individual test results. Likewise, you can quickly retrieve, analyze, and return test results to study participants. You can estimate your risk for development of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and your risk of cardiovascular disease from the American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org). Consider the physical therapist who wants to track patient improvement. Using the computer to track and display data serves as an excellent source of formative and summative evaluation.
- Conducting program evaluation. Computers can calculate changes in overall student performance and learning across teaching units or track individual changes in a student's performance.
- Conducting research activities. You can compare an experimental group of study participants with a control group to determine if your new intervention program has a significant effect on cognitive or physiological performance.
- Developing presentations. Specialized software can be used to create powerful presentations you can make before students, potential clients, patients, and professional peers. The presentations can include text, pictures, video, graphics, animations, and sound to effectively present your message. Perhaps your instructor is using the presentation package that accompanies this textbook to illustrate specific points.
- Assessing student performance.Students and clients are always interested in how they perform on tests, whether the tests are cognitive, psychomotor, or physiological. Students, teachers, and clinicians are interested in what their individual scores are, how they are interpreted, what they mean, and what effect they have. Computers make it easy to provide the answers to all these questions.
- Storing test items. Teachers always have to keep records of student grades. Programs that permit entry and manipulation of student data records are called spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are essentially computer versions of a data matrix with rows and columns of information. Students' names are often found in the first column, and data from course assignments fill the remaining columns. Thus, each row represents a student and each column holds scores from tests and other assignments. If the instructor keeps a daily record of class grades, then average grades, final grades, printed reports, and so on can be generated with a few computer keystrokes. Likewise, health and fitness professionals can keep records of workouts and changes in weight, strength, aerobic capacity, and so forth.
- Creating written tests.Computers can serve as a bank for written test items. Rather than having to develop a new test each time you teach a unit, you can store test items on your computer and generate a different test each time you teach the unit. Test banks can be built using word-processing or test-development software. Some test-development programs are quite sophisticated and permit you to choose an item not only by content area but also by type of item, degree of difficulty, or date created.
- Calculating numerous statistics. Physiological measurements often involve equations for estimating values. For example, skinfolds are used to estimate percent body fat, and distance runs and heart rate measurements are used to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. The computer can greatly assist in calculating these values. Rather than substituting each number into an equation and going through the steps to complete the calculation, you can enter the formula into the computer once and automatically calculate the desired value for each person. For example, go to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm) and calculate your body mass index (BMI).
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Improving Assessment Practices in Physical Education Settings
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face.
The purpose of this chapter is not to convince people that performance-based assessments are the solution to the assessment dilemmas that teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 schools face. Performance-based assessments do expand the possible ways in which teachers can assess their students and are probably best used along with other traditional forms of assessment. For example, skills tests are a good way to look at skills in a closed situation. They are excellent formative assessments that can provide feedback to students and teachers about current levels of student ability. Consider the following example that uses both types of assessment:
Mrs. Gaylor is an experienced teacher who has selected pickleball to teach net and wall tactics. She wants her students to be able to play pickleball at the conclusion of the unit and has decided that she will use a rubric to assess game play to determine students' overall abilities to play the game during a class doubles tournament. The rubric used for assessing game play will require students to use correct form when executing shots, to strategically place the ball away from the opponent, to work with a partner, to demonstrate positive sport behaviors toward the partner and opponent, to know the rules, and to use the serve to gain an offensive advantage (e.g., not just get it over the net, but put spin on it and place it away from the opponent if possible). She will not assess individual skills during the game because often form is sacrificed as players make an attempt at an errant ball. Instead, skills tests will be used for evaluating the volley shot, the serve, and a continuous rally. All of the skills tests are done against a wall so that a student doing the skills test does not need to depend on another student to demonstrate his or her own skillfulness. Although knowledge of rules will be one of the categories on the game play rubric, an additional written test (selected response, short answer essay) will be given so that lower-skilled students who might know the rules but not be able to demonstrate them during game play will have the opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge.
On the first day of the unit, Mrs. Gaylor informs students of her expectations, demonstrates the skills tests, and provides students with the game play rubric, which is also posted on the wall so that students can refer to it when needed. During the unit, Mrs. Gaylor incorporates the skills tests into her teaching progressions. Students are allowed to take the skills tests before and after the instructional part of class and during the class tournament when they are not playing a game. Students can take the skills tests multiple times - the goal is to reach the criterion scores that Mrs. Gaylor gave when explaining the tests. At the start of class, students pick up a 3-inch × 5-inch (7.6 cm × 12.7 cm) note card that has a place to record practice trials and results (this is a participation log). Students are allowed 10 minutes at the beginning of class to dress for class and practice their skills. Those students demonstrating more effort change their clothes quickly and have more opportunity to test, practice for the skills tests, or both. By looking at the practice logs (the note cards) Mrs. Gaylor can see which skills need more work and use this information while planning her lessons. Additionally, Mrs. Gaylor is keeping track of those students passing their skills tests and knows which skills need additional instruction, the students who need more assistance, and the students who need additional challenges because they have achieved the basic level of competence.
The tasks used for instruction are designed to teach students the skills and tactics needed to play pickleball. The content of the lessons is guided by the information (data) that Mrs. Gaylor is getting from her formative assessments. Before the start of game play, a rules test is given to ensure that all students have cognitive knowledge of the rules. When students start to play games, she will observe them multiple times using the game play rubric. The areas of lower performance will be addressed in future lessons. Classes conclude with students completing exit slips that require them to answer questions about the content of the day's lesson. On the exit slip, students also have an opportunity to ask any questions about things from the class that they didn't understand, request additional instruction on an area that is proving difficult for them to learn, or ask for challenges such as additional skills or game play tactics to help them continue to improve.
As physical educators and instructors strive to improve the quality of their programs, many will heed the reform initiatives of education experts who propose that standards-based education and performance-based assessment offer great promise for enhancing the education system. To improve the preparation of physical education teachers and other physical activity specialists so that they are able to conduct meaningful assessments, our profession needs to embrace a new way of thinking about assessment. Although this chapter proposes that physical education teachers include performance-based assessment techniques in their repertoire of assessment methods, it is not suggesting that teachers completely abandon traditional, standardized testing techniques.As shown in the example, there is a need for both, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Regardless of the approach taken, teachers should use meaningful assessment in physical education class or other physical activity settings. The design and incorporation of clear, developmentally appropriate, and explicitly defined scoring rubrics are essential to ensure valid inferences about learning, consistency, and fairness.
Stiggins (1987) suggested that the most important element in designing performance-based assessments is the explicit definition of the performance criteria. Moreover, Herman, Aschbacher, and Winters (1992) stated that criteria for judging student performance lie at the heart of performance-based assessment. If performance-based assessments are to realize their promise and live up to expectations, then it is essential that high-quality assessments be accompanied by clear, meaningful, and credible scoring criteria.
The following guidelines (adapted from Gronlund 1993) provide ways to improve the credibility and usefulness of performance-based assessment in physical education.
- Ensure that assessments are congruent with the intended outcomes and instructional practices of the class.
- Recognize that, together, observation and informed judgment with written results compose a legitimate and meaningful method of assessment.
- Use an assessment procedure that will provide the information needed to make a judgment about the intended student learning.
- Use authentic tasks in a realistic setting, thus providing contextualized meaning to the assessment.
- Design and incorporate clear, explicitly defined scoring rubrics with the assessment.
- Provide scoring rubrics and evaluative criteria to students and other interested persons.
- Be as objective as possible in observing, judging, and recording performance.
- Record assessment results during the observation.
- Use multiple assessments whenever possible.
- Use assessment to enhance student learning.
A balanced approach to assessment is the prudent path to follow. The issue is not whether one form of assessment is intrinsically better than another. No assessment model is suited for every purpose. The real issue is determining what type of performance indicator best serves the purpose of the assessment and then choosing an appropriate assessment method that is suitable for providing this type of information.
Mastery Item 14.10
Identify the types of student learning that Mrs. Gaylor can document using the procedure just explained. How do traditional skill assessments work with performance-based assessments to enhance student learning?
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
Measurement Challenges for Children with Physical and Mental Disabilities
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities.
Special Children
One of the biggest measurement challenges that you may confront as a professional in human performance is the assessment of physical fitness in children with physical or mental disabilities. Keep in mind that the fitness test batteries discussed in this chapter would exclude or be biased against many children with physical disabilities (i.e., those having physical or organic limitations, such as cerebral palsy) and children with mental disabilities (i.e., those with mental or psychological limitations, such as autism) because of their specific disabilities. Before you can administer or evaluate fitness test results, you must consider the participants' physical and organic limitations; neural and emotional capacity; interfering reflexes; and acquisition of prerequisite functions, responses, and abilities (Seaman and DePauw 1989). You can develop the basic knowledge and competence that you need for assessing the fitness and activity of children with disabilities from your instruction and learning experiences in adapted physical education, that is, physical education adjusted to accommodate children with physical or mental limitations. The physical fitness tests selected should be appropriate for an individual student based on his or her disability as well as on the fitness capacity to be measured. Seaman and DePauw (1989) and Winnick and Short (1999) are excellent sources for detailed information on fitness assessment of special children.
The Brockport Physical Fitness Test (Winnick and Short 1999), a health-related physical fitness test for youths aged 10 through 17 with various disabilities, was developed through a research study, Project Target, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The test battery includes criterion-referenced standards for 25 tests. The test manual helps professionals consider each student's disability and select the most appropriate test and test protocol. The test comes with Fitness Challenge software to help professionals administer the test and develop a database. Table 10.9 provides potential items for fitness assessment, the appropriate population with disabilities for the test, and reliability and validity comments for each test. The complete test kit includes a manual, software, a demonstration video, and a fitness training guide.
http://www.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/144/E6200_500654_ebook_Main.jpg
Learn more about Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, Fifth Edition With Web Study Guide.
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