Measure Your Mind: The Mentimeter and How to Use ItTrabue, Marion Rex
Science
Measure Your Mind: The Mentimeter and How to Use It
Trabue, Marion Rex
Educational tests and measurements; Intelligence tests; Psychological tests
The coefficient found between the teacher’s estimates of intelligence
and the results of educational measurements, .51, indicates a really
useful degree of coördination. Unless a Mentimeter test shows a
coefficient of coordination of .25 or more with the production records
(or other reliable measure of true ability), it may be considered as
having little value in helping to select and differentiate men for that
particular line of work. If the coefficient is above .5, the test is
quite useful, and the nearer the coefficient approaches 1.00 the more
confidence one may place in the test as a means of selecting and
classifying men in that particular field.
The sixth column of the table on page 329 gives the difference between
the test results rankings and the scholarship marks rankings, and the
seventh column gives the squares of these differences, the sum of these
squares being given at the bottom of the seventh column as 1411.5. By
substituting in the formula,
ρ = 1 − (6Σd^2)/(n(n^2 − 1)) = 1 − (6 × 1411.5)/(28 × 783) = 1 −
8469./21924. = 1 − .386 = .614,
it appears that the tests more closely correspond with the average of
the scholarship marks given by the teacher than with the teacher’s
estimate of intelligence. This is partly to be explained by the fact
that the tests given were measurements of ability in school subjects
rather than tests of intelligence, and still more by the fact that the
teacher gave scholarship marks on the basis of relatively objective
examinations while her estimates of intelligence are always wholly
subjective.
The eighth and ninth columns on page 8 give the differences between the
ranks in the teacher’s estimates of intelligence and the ranks in the
scholarship marks given during a half year. The coefficient of
coördination worked out from these differences is
.833 (ρ = 1 − (6 × 611)/(28 × 783) = 1 − 3666/21924 = 1 − .167 = .833)
which would seem to indicate that the teacher drew very heavily on her
knowledge of the relative scholarship of her pupils in making her
estimates of their intellectual capacities.
The three coefficients worked out above for 28 pupils in a sixth grade
are typical of the mathematical relationships the reader will wish to
work out between known degrees of ability in a certain type of work and
the results of the Mentimeter tests. The coefficients of coördination
for the sixth-grade pupils studied above are, between
Educational Measurements and Estimated Intelligence = .51
Educational Measurements and Scholarship Averages = .61
Estimated Intelligence and Scholarship Averages = .83
No method of forecasting degree of success in one line of work from
quality of performance in another task (or in a test) will give a
perfect coefficient of coordination of 1.00, but the nearer the
coefficient approaches 1.00 the more reliance one may put in the test
which furnishes such a ranking of the individuals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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