Self-Report Measure of a Student - Assignment Example

The purpose of this measure development is therefore to develop a test that seeks to measure the conscientiousness of a group of people. The identified target group, otherwise known as the sample size of the test is a group of students who have been identified to possess different traits of conscientiousness. Background on conscientiousness Conscientiousness has been explained in various forms and using different motives and perspectives. Generally, though, conscientiousness is a human trait that understudies the desire of a person to undertake a task well.

When used as a principle in psychology, conscientiousness has been said to be a “personality trait that influences whether people set and keep long-range goals, deliberate over choices or behave impulsively, and take seriously obligations to others” (Psychology Today, 2013). From the explanation given, the conscientiousness of a student would be said to be a very important psychological trait to measure as it could influence several aspects and areas of the student’s academic life. In most cases, educationists have been admonished to help students identify their level of conscientiousness as this opens the way for several academic progressions to be made (Hissam and Daniel, 1999).

This is because this knowledge helps students to identify their weaknesses and strengths, as well as ways of enhancing their weaknesses and promoting their strengths. Item development process The item development process was a very important aspect of the whole project that was carried out. Generally, the researcher concerned himself with achieving two things, which are the validity and reliability of the test. The researcher employed the use of parallel forms reliability as the type of reliability used to assess the reliability of the test that was constructed.

In this type of reliability, different versions of tests are carried out. The different tests are made to contain different test items but to collect a relatively similar construct (Icove, Karl, and Vonstorch, 2005). What may be acceptable reliability with parallel forms reliability is for there to be consistency with the responses of candidates when a correlation assessment is performed. Once a correlation assessment shows vast variations in the variables that are measured, the reliability of the test will be said to have been compromised.

Researchers often have two major means to demonstrate the evidence of validity, which are criterion validity and content validity. Because the test seeks to assess students’ conscientiousness, the researcher looked for evidence of validity by using criterion validity, which is a form of validity that measures whether or not the test highlights a certain set of abilities (Chen and So, 2002). The conscientiousness of students has to do with some key abilities and characteristics that they possess and so using the criterion validity would best bring out these values and abilities.

The proposed method of administration There are many methods of administration that the users of the test can use in collecting data from the sample size. There could be online administration and pencil and paper administration methods. However, given the fact that the current sample size is made up of a set of students who are easily identifiable with a specific setting, the method of administration should be the pencil and paper method.