Lauer Chapter 6

Note: My Lauer chapter 5 blog seems to have cut off a sentence or more in the beginning of the blog. I just noticed this when creating this blog.

The Suddarth and Wirt study seems like a useful study, even for today. Colleges are constantly trying to find ways to place students in appropriate courses. The researchers wanted to predict course placement using pre-college information, so the research question involved asking what information would lead to appropriate college placement. The subjects were 5000 Freshmen at Purdue University in 1971. The context of this study included an era when when appropriate course placement was (perhaps?) more of a new field of research. The students were to be placed in composition, mathematics, and chemistry courses. The data selection included the use of ten predictor variables. These include the following: high-school rank, high-school GPA, SAT verbal score, SAT math score, semesters of foreign language, high-school English grade, semesters of math, semesters of science, math grades and science grades. Analysis included regression analysis equations, as no other methods were found to be as accurate when considering psychology as a whole. The researchers also used the 1971 equation on data from freshmen of 1972, and this helped validate the prediction equation.

I do agree that the type of analysis used indeed created a highly accurate study, as previous statistics courses have shown me the often amazing accuracy possible. If, however, I consider the context of the study I do question some of the ten predictor variables. SAT scores do not, I believe, give any good indication of an appropriate math course for college for most students. Generally using past performance to predict future performance is questionable, though I realize with a large population this reasoning and analysis can produce (and does produce) meaningful results. I suppose I like to consider more of the psychology behind the issue of course placement. Will, for example, a student starting college want a fresh start and surpass the old expectations? Or, perhaps he or she will do much worse than expected given the psychological demands of college? My feeling is that past scores and grades can be good predictors for some students, though not for others. Of course, every student cannot have a personal college coach that looks out for his or her best interest in courses. Advisers are overworked and not knowledge about every single student, so analysis with large amounts of data seems to be the next best solution. With the increased use of computer technology, perhaps course placement will change. Here I am thinking of online essay "tests" for composition courses, such as those at BGSU.