Exploring relationships between objective and subjective measures of instructional outcomes

This study reports on a pilot project in performance funding. A stratified random sample of 112 seniors at Tennessee Technological University participated in a special assessment exercise involving the ACT Battery and the ACT COMP (College Outcome Measures Project). The participants also completed a questionnaire designed to elicit self-reports of progress toward the realization of a set of institution-wide or general education goals. This article explores the relationships between objective ortest performance and subjective orstudent testimony instructional outcomes measures. Its specific focus is upon assessing the construct validity of student testimony data as indicators of selected general education outcomes. The implications of the findings for the better-informed selection, implementation, and interpretation of instructional outcomes measures are discussed.Presented at the Nineteenth Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, San Diego, California, May 1979.