Does fake news affect voting behaviour?

We study the impact of fake news on votes for populist parties in the Italian elections of 2018. Our empirical strategy exploits the historical variation in Italian-speaking and German-speaking voters in the Italian region of Trentino Alto-Adige/Südtirol as an exogenous source of assignment to fake news exposure. Using municipal data, we compare the effect of exposure to fake news on the vote for populist parties in the 2013 and 2018 elections. To do so, we introduce a novel indicator of populism using text mining on the Facebook posts of Italian parties before the elections. Our findings support the view that exposure to fake news favours populist parties regardless of prior support for populist parties, but also that fake news alone cannot explain most of the growth in populism.     

Cost-effective models for delivering behaviour analysis teaching in UK schools and local authorities

Education programmes based on behaviour analysis are often used to teach children with learning disabilities. A common application of behaviour analysis is Early Intensive Behaviour Intervention (EIBI), which is evidence-based, but most children in the UK do not have access to this approach. EIBI is usually implemented for 30 to 40 hours per week, over two years. High levels of supervision from behaviour analysts are essential to ensure EIBI's effectiveness. A recent cost-effectiveness study concluded that EIBI was not cost-effective: while the children make progress relative to treatment as usual, the outcomes did not justify the cost of the intervention. Other low-cost models of delivery need to be considered. School-based models used in the UK may provide cost-effective and sustainable ways to use applied behaviour analysis in schools. They could be used in other local authorities to increase access to an education that includes behaviour analysis.     

Beyond item analysis: Connecting student behaviour and performance using e-assessment logs

Traditional item analyses such as classical test theory (CTT) use exam-taker responses to assessment items to approximate their difficulty and discrimination. The increased adoption by educational institutions of electronic assessment platforms (EAPs) provides new avenues for assessment analytics by capturing detailed logs of an exam-taker's journey through their exam. This paper explores how logs created by EAPs can be employed alongside exam-taker responses and CTT to gain deeper insights into exam items. In particular, we propose an approach for deriving features from exam logs for approximating item difficulty and discrimination based on exam-taker behaviour during an exam. Items for which difficulty and discrimination differ significantly between CTT analysis and our approach are flagged through outlier detection for independent academic review. We demonstrate our approach by analysing de-identified exam logs and responses to assessment items of 463 medical students enrolled in a first-year biomedical sciences course. The analysis shows that the number of times an exam-taker visits an item before selecting a final response is a strong indicator of an item's difficulty and discrimination. Scrutiny by the course instructor of the seven items identified as outliers suggests our log-based analysis can provide insights beyond what is captured by traditional item analyses.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Traditional item analysis is based on exam-taker responses to the items using mathematical and statistical models from classical test theory (CTT). The difficulty and discrimination indices thus calculated can be used to determine the effectiveness of each item and consequently the reliability of the entire exam.

What this paper adds

• Data extracted from exam logs can be used to identify exam-taker behaviours which complement classical test theory in approximating the difficulty and discrimination of an item and identifying items that may require instructor review.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Identifying the behaviours of successful exam-takers may allow us to develop effective exam-taking strategies and personal recommendations for students.
• Analysing exam logs may also provide an additional tool for identifying struggling students and items in need of revision.

     

In search of health information…

Searching for health information is a core activity for health library and knowledge workers, whether seeking to support health care workers in overcoming barriers to accessing drug information, exploring the potential of text mining in developing search filters, translating search filters for use on alternative databases, or the importance of updating search filters to ensure their ongoing utility.