Our study consists of pre and post semester matched survey instruments (which can be previewed here) with the following attributes:
1) The same bank of 25 multiple-choice questions. These questions are designed to assess the following quantitative skills, which we’ve identified as particularly “real world”-relevant: graph reading, table reading, arithmetic, proportional reasoning, estimation, percentages, statistics/probability, area/volume, error, and unit conversions/dimensional analysis.
2) Each quantitative question is followed by a question asking the student to rate their confidence in the answer they just provided.
3) Students are asked a series of questions about their gender, ethnicity, preparedness and attitudes toward math and science so that we might study the correlation between these attributes and trends in quantitative proficiency gains.
4) Students are asked to identify the skills that they believe were emphasized in their course in the post-semester instrument.
5) Students who do not complete both instruments or who spend fewer than 10 minutes on either version of the instrument are excluded from the results.
We welcome the input of the Science Ed community. What haven’t we thought of? How could our instrument be improved?
If you be willing to review/assess our instrument or study design, we would be delighted to send it along for your consideration! We are also always looking for experienced research collaborators.