Latent variable models: Applications in education

Most theories in the social sciences involve relationships among constructs which are not directly observable. Behavioral measures exist of all constructs, such as intelligence, creativity, and other cognitive traits, aggressiveness, sociability, and other personality and affective characteristics; but these observed measures are usually assumed to be imperfect indicators of the (presumed) underlying construct. The imperfections exist because of errors of measurement and because the observed behavior may be influenced by other underlying constructs in addition to the one of primary interest. Statistical methods, called latent variable models, have been developed to provide rigorous tests of theories involving unobserved variables. This paper describes the major types of latent variable models, shows how they can be applied in educational research, and gives representative examples of their use from the literature.     

The role of objectives in guiding the organization of information learned from text

This study was designed to identify how objectives influence the organization of the information recalled from text. Three hypotheses were investigated: (1) that objectives affect the sequence of attention to information in text, (2) that they affect the sequence in which information is rehearsed during a review period, or (3) that they serve as a set of cues at retrieval. One hundred college students read objectives either before or after reading a passage (varying the opportunity for objectives to affect the sequence of attention). They then either had or did not have a review period (varying the opportunity to use objectives to sequence rehearsal and also varying the presence of the objectives in memory at the time of retrieval). One hundred more students read the passage in control conditions with objectives available throughout the reading or with no objectives available. Results showed that students given objectives after reading but before a review period had more clustering by objectives in free recall than did those who never saw objectives, supporting the hypothesis that organization by objectives occurs during rehearsal. No evidence was found to support the notion that organization by objectives occurs during encoding or retrieval phases.     

A review of reliability procedures for measuring observer agreement

The present article reviews the procedures that have been developed for measuring the reliability of human observers' judgments when making direct observations of behavior. Measures such as the percentage of agreement, Cohen's kappa, and phi have been used to measure observer agreement; however, these coefficients have serious limitations. In addition to specifying the deficiencies that exist with these excessively used reliability measures, the present article discusses recently developed univariate and multivariate agreement measures that are based on quasi-equiprobability and quasi-independence models and estimates. Improvements in precision are provided by such models and estimates since they (1) yield a probability based coefficient of agreement with a directly interpretable meaning, (2) correct for the proportion of “chance” agreement, and (3) allow the partitioning of the agreement and disagreement estimates within the models.     

Irrelevant information: Some effects on children's problem-solving

Children of 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 years of age were given simple, social-matching problems. Two conditions were employed: each involved verbal presentation but in one (Condition V) no concrete representation was involved while in the other (Condition M) models were also used. Within each condition, information was provided which was (a) sufficient, (b) superfluous, (c) irrelevant or which displayed a combination of these characteristics. For all age groups, the problems containing only irrelevant information were the most difficult, although Condition M enhanced the performance of younger children while depressing that of 7- and 9-year-olds. The results were interpreted as supporting the view that a major source of difficulty for the child may lie in selecting the appropriate referent. Some inferences are drawn regarding the abilities of children to cope with ambiguity.     

Theme and prose comprehension: Understanding or depth-of-processing?

Context orientation and depth of processing were tested as possible explanations for thematic organization. In the first experiment, the process of searching for the theme of concrete versions of prose passages by undergraduates was detrimental to subsequent recall. On the other hand, theme statements facilitated recall when provided prior to concrete as well as abstract versions of each passage. Finally, the theme search process with the abstract versions was beneficial only when the correct theme was identified. A second experiment provided further data supporting the comprehension hypothesis for theme organization when precise, instructor-generated theme statements were used instead of learner-generated themes.     

Adjunct question effects with review

The effects on retention of adjunct questions either placed at the end of a passage or inserted after their respective paragraphs within the passage were examined. The high school subjects were encouraged to review the materials after encountering the questions, a departure from traditional procedures in the field. Both treatments led to superior retention of the previously questioned facts when compared to a passage-only control group, but did not increase retention of previously unquestioned facts. The position of the adjunct questions did not differentially affect performance. The discrepancy of the results from those traditionally reported are interpreted in terms of the procedures employed.     

Measures of cognitive structure: Do they assess learning at the level of comprehension?

One purpose of this study was to determine whether cognitive structure, assessed by psychometric measures of concept interrelatedness, can be developed when the students initially do not know what concept relationships exist and what they mean. The second purpose was to apply those measures to a learning situation that has produced a nonspecific transfer effect, i.e., the facilitative effect of concrete examples on learning abstract passages, to attempt to explain this effect more completely. Five groups of 20 students each read two prose passages and took recall and structure assessment tests on the second passage. Results (1) indicated that the nonspecific facilitative transfer effect was replicated and (2) offered some support for the contention that the cognitive structure which proximity measures assess can be trained to correspond to content structure, but that related recall remains low. With resolution of some of the methodological issues surrounding these measures, however, clearer explanation of transfer effects and assessment of higher order learning may be facilitated.     

Cognitive styles,abilities, and aptitudes: Are they dependent or independent?

An important question that must be answered is whether cognitive styles, abilities, and aptitudes provide complementary or redundant information regarding students' characteristics. Measures of 6 styles, 6 abilities, and 12 aptitudes were administered to 201 Navy recruits. Relationships among all cognitive attributes and between sets of styles and abilities as well as styles and aptitudes were examined by computing product-moment correlations and two canonical analyses. A principal-factor analysis and varimax rotation were also computed for all 24 characteristics. The results indicated that many styles are significantly related to abilities and aptitudes. However, the amount of shared variance between styles and abilities or aptitudes is small. Three significant factors were extracted (i.e., technical aptitude, verbal ability, and general problem solving) which underlie much of the variability of these cognitive characteristics. The data demonstrated (1) the relative dependence of most cognitive styles with abilities and aptitudes inherent to general problem solving, and (2) the relative independence of some cognitive styles from technical aptitude and verbal ability dimensions.     

Teacher characteristics and teacher performance

This study investigated effects of seven demographic and psychological characteristics of teachers on their performances during student teaching. Student teachers' performances were examined in relation to their ages, prior student teaching experiences, scholastic aptitudes, attitudes toward teaching, moral reasoning abilities, conceptual levels, and degrees of ego development. Results indicate that student teachers' performances were dependent in a nontrivial way on their ego development and to a much lesser degree on other characteristics.     

Effects of administrative scheduling and directions upon student ratings of instruction

Using temporal proximity of instructor/course evaluations to critical in-course events, together with psychological set provided via directions, the present investigation sought to assess (1) the appropriateness of within-course time-series analyses for instructor ratings, and (2) the potency of inducing rater perceptions of the rating process as an interactive variable in course evaluations. A 2 × 2 (temporal proximity by psychological set) factorial design used students enrolled in two sections of an undergraduate course in educational psychology as subjects. Using both midterm and final examination time periods as data collection points, the results of this investigation suggested that preexamination instructor/course evaluations tend to be more favorable than postexamination evaluations, and that a specific positive psychological set prior to evaluations tends to produce more favorable evaluations than very general, brief instructions.     

Interpreting WISC-R and McCarthy scatter: A caution

In this investigation, indices of scatter on the WISC-R and McCarthy Scales were examined for 20 educable mentally retarded and 20 learning disabled children in relation to a similar control group. The scatter found in the two exceptional samples was also compared to the variability found in the standardization samples of the WISC-R and McCarthy. Results indicated that the learning-disabled sample exhibited more WISC-R subtest scatter and McCarthy Scale variability than the standardization sample but not more than the control group. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Eye movement analysis of information processing under different testing conditions

The study reported herein was designed to use eye movement data, collected during solution of complex figural analogies, to test the premise that enhanced feedback mechanisms and opportunities for dual coding of figural stimulus information result in the allocation of an increased percentage of information-processing resources to rule application activities. Subjects were given items from the Advanced Progressive Matrices under elaborated feedback, subject verbalization, or standard procedures. Results indicate that elaborative testing conditions, involving elaborated feedback or subject verbalization, enhance the rule-governed nature of information processing during inductive reasoning by augmenting feedback and dual coding.     

Feedback complexity and corrective efficiency

College undergraduates read a 2400-word passage, responded to 16 multiple-choice questions, and received one of four types of feedback following their responses. Complexity of feedback was inversely related to both error correctability and criterion efficiency taken as a ratio of feedback study time to post-test corrects. The results were discussed in terms of depth of processing and instructional comprehension.