What Should University Admissions Tests Predict?

Stemler, Steven E.

doi:10.1080/00461520.2011.611444

Cited by 68 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…These findings concur with the available literature (e.g. O'Neill et al 2011;Sinha et al 2011;Richardson, Abraham, and Bond 2012;Stemler 2012;Cortes 2013;Edwards, Friedman, and Pearce 2013;Kreiter and Axelson 2013;Gaertner and Larsen McClarty 2015). Note that in The Netherlands, selective university programmes are obliged to use additional admission toolkits besides SSGPA, and that all non-selective university programmes are obliged to offer applicants a study check (e.g.…”

Section: Signal Detection Theory Outcomessupporting

confidence: 80%

“…Although Shulruf, Hattie, and Tumen (2008) (see also Shulruf et al 2011) found correlations >0.60 of SSGPA with university first-year GPA using a specific and new calculation of SSGPA, it is more commonly reported as only a reasonable predictor of university GPA, with r ≈ 0.40 (Richardson, Abraham, and Bond 2012;Edwards, Friedman, and Pearce 2013). Although their predictive power in most studies is arguably much smaller than desired, past academic achievement (de Koning et al 2012;van der Heijden, Hessen, and Wubbels 2012), cognitive admission tests (visser et al 2012) and non-cognitive measures (Huang 2012;Richardson, Abraham, and Bond 2012;Sternberg et al 2012) have all been shown to be valid predictors of academic achievement to a certain extent (Robbins et al 2004;O'Neill et al 2011;Sinha et al 2011;Poole et al 2012;Schmitt 2012;Stemler 2012;Kreiter and Axelson 2013;Preiss et al 2013;Sawyer 2013;Christersson et al 2014;Sartania et al 2014;Simpson et al 2014;Gaertner and Larsen McClarty 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Signal detection theory as a tool for successful student selection

Linden

Smagt

Woertman

et al. 2016

Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education

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Prediction accuracy of academic achievement for admission purposes requires adequate sensitivity and specificity of admission tools, yet the available information on the validity and predictive power of admission tools is largely based on studies using correlational and regression statistics. The goal of this study was to explore signal detection theory as a tool to extend the available information; signal detection theory allows for comparisons of selection outcomes on both group and individual levels and the development of tailor-made criteria for specific programmes and admission goals. We investigated who would or would not have been admitted applying specific criteria for each of three common admission tools, how many admitted students would fail and how many applicants who would have been successful would be rejected. Both comparisons at an individual level and the receiver operating characteristic curves at a group level revealed that scores obtained in a programme-specific matching programme and non-cognitive factors appear more valuable than regression statistics suggest when it comes to admitting applicants who will become successful students. Signal detection theory allows not only for admission-goal-specific and programme-specific fine-tuning of the content of admission tools, it also informs about the effects of criteria and thus allows the setting of criteria.

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Section: Signal Detection Theory Outcomessupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signal detection theory as a tool for successful student selection

Linden

Smagt

Woertman

et al. 2016

Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…On the other hand, it has been suggested that university admissions benefit from the use of broader cognitive measures alongside previous academic achievement (Stemler, 2012). Our results indicated that the critical comparison of information requires skills different from those evaluated in the matriculation examinations or in the entrance examination for degree programs in the educational sciences.…”

Section: Implications Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 41%

“…An important argument for developing critical thinking assessments in university admissions is that measures of a broad range of domain-general abilities could serve as additional predictors of students' academic achievement, alongside aptitude tests and their high school grade point average (HSGPA) (Stemler, 2012). The predictive values of aptitude tests and HSGPA for academic achievement in universities have been well verified in the United States (e.g., Geiser & Santelices, 2007;Schmitt et al, 2009;Sackett, Kuncel, Arneson, Cooper, & Waters, 2009).…”

Section: Critical Thinking and Academic Achievementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This further suggests that investigation of the critical thinking skills of applicants to teacher education programs, and to programs of educational sciences in general, is important. Also Stemler (2012) has suggested that university admission procedures could benefit from the inclusion of a component assessing critical thinking. However, little is known about the quality of the critical thinking skills of university applicants and how critical thinking could best be taken into account in screening for university admission.…”

Section: The Purpose Of the Study And Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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University Applicants’ Critical Thinking Skills: The Case of the Finnish Educational Sciences

Utriainen

Marttunen

Kallio

et al. 2016

Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research

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This study investigates the quality of the critical thinking skills of applicants (n=77) seeking entry to the faculty of educational sciences in a Finnish university and how these skills are associated with the applicant's age, previous higher education experience and matriculation and entrance examination scores. The data consist of the applicants' responses to problem-solving tasks and their matriculation and entrance examination scores. Critical thinking skills were measured with comparison and argumentation tasks. The results indicate that comparison of the texts and analysis of the arguments they contained were more difficult tasks than putting forward arguments both for and against of one's personal standpoint. In addition, previous experience of higher education predicted participants' comparison skills and their matriculation examination grades predicted their argumentation skills. The feasibility of using critical comparison tasks in the entrance examination tests is discussed.Keywords: critical thinking, argumentation, entrance examination, academic achievement, higher education 3Critical thinking and well-developed argumentation skills are commonly seen as important from the civic participation perspective (Arum & Roksa, 2011;Kuhn, 2005;Williams, Foster & Krohn, 2008), and are also regarded as key learning outcomes by higher education institutions (Halpern, 2001). Hence it is not surprising that university students' critical thinking skills have been widely studied (e.g., reviews by Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005;Niu, Behar-Horenstein & Garvan, 2013), and also that various definitions of critical thinking have been proposed. For example, Elder and Paul (2010) define critical thinking as a process of assessing and analyzing one's own thinking with the aim of improving it, whereas Ennis (1993) conceptualizes critical thinking as reasonable reflective thinking, aiming at deciding what to believe or not. These definitions highlight the importance of knowledge and its justification in conceptions of critical thinking. Ennis (2008) has labeled views of this kind as epistemic approaches to the conception of critical thinking, since they share the purpose of finding the truth or at least the closest approximation to it. In contrast to this common epistemic element is the claim that there is no unanimous definition of critical thinking (Flores, Matkin, Burbach, Quinn & Harding, 2012). Nevertheless, three common dimensions for critical thinking have been suggested, namely the ability to perform rational and reasonable thinking, the ability to see alternative viewpoints, and the ability to reflect on one's own thinking and its quality (Niu et al., 2013;Flores et al., 2012).Like the definitions of critical thinking, the research results on learning critical thinking skills as an outcome of university studies are also conflicting. In some studies, participation in higher education has been found to develop certain elements of students' critical thinking, that is, the ability to approach problems from various...

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Content Analysis

Stemler

2015

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

311

261

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In the era of “big data,” the methodological technique of content analysis can be the most powerful tool in the researcher's kit. Content analysis is versatile enough to apply to textual, visual, and audio data. Given the massive explosion in permanent, archived linguistic, photographic, video, and audio data arising from the proliferation of technology, the technique of content analysis appears to be on the verge of a renaissance. In this essay, I discuss cutting‐edge examples of how content analysis is being applied or might be applied to the study of areas as diverse as education, criminology, and social intelligence.

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What Should University Admissions Tests Predict?

Cited by 68 publications

References 38 publications

Signal detection theory as a tool for successful student selection

Signal detection theory as a tool for successful student selection

University Applicants’ Critical Thinking Skills: The Case of the Finnish Educational Sciences

Content Analysis

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