There are many aspects to writing test questions.
- What is a test trying to determine?
- How accurately does a test measure what it wants to determine?
- How will the test taker interpret the questions?
- How easy is it to take the test?
- How easy is it to grade the test?
- How easy is it to cheat on the test?
Have you ever thought about making a career out of developing tests?
Essay tests on literature are more difficult to take than math tests, but they are a better measure of understanding the subject than selecting multiple choice options, for example. True or false, yes or no, and matching columns are easy tests to take and grade, but there are many cases where they are not an accurate measure of what you might be trying to determine, and they can make cheating easy, too. Flash the student next to you three fingers, and they can give you a sign for true or yes on question three.
Besides pencil and paper tests, there are many other types of assessments. Before elections, telephone survey questions are popular. Thermometers take temperatures, barometers measure pressure, and stopwatches time speed. Sensors in fields tell when and where crops need water. Lie detectors catch criminals as do other crime solving forensics.
I was reading a scientific research paper a student intern helped write, when I started thinking about test-making careers. Listed in the paper were the kits, such as a "Fine Science Tools Sample Corer," Item No. 18035-02 from Foster City, CA, USA, that companies develop to help scientists anywhere in the world make standardized measurements. The previous post, "Lyme Aid," and the earlier post, "Teens Find Drought and Zika Remedies," talk about the need to develop more medical tests.
Floyd Landis knows all about the testing kits that already exist. He is the former cycling teammate of Lance Armstrong, who gave Landis his first testosterone patches and introduced him to boosting energizing, oxygen-carrying red blood cells through the process of doping. With these physiological enhancements, Landis set a spectacular time cycling through Stage 17 on the French mountains to win the Tour de France the year after Armstrong retired. His victory was short lived. When he failed the drug test that showed synthetic testosterone in his urine, he was stripped of his title, lost his home and wife, and repaid donors almost a half million dollars.
Landis suspects testing has not caught up with the latest ways cyclists compromise the sport. Some, supposedly clean racers still set the time he made while using unauthorized measures on Stage 17. Investigations in the UK, for example, continue to find abuses of the Therapeutic Use Exemption system that permits athletes to take banned drugs for medical conditions.
Of course, athletes and students aren't the only ones who try to game the testing system. Teachers who knew their evaluations depended on the grades their student achieved on standardized tests were caught erasing wrong answers and substituting correct ones on their students' tests. After Volkswagen violated the US Clean Air Law by using a computer code to cheat on emissions tests, the company paid a $25 billion penalty.
Well aware that doping, match-fixing, and other abuses have plagued former Olympic Games, France has launched "Compliance 2024," a group formed to establish new laws, practices, and norms to promote transparency and accountability to govern the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Such a group emphasizes opportunities for international careers in the test-making business. The perfect test is yet to be developed.
(Answers to test in later post, "Help for Human Rights:" 1.C, 2.D, 3.B, 4.H, 5.A, 6.E His troops were short on amo, 7.G, 8.F)
(Answers to test in later post, "Help for Human Rights:" 1.C, 2.D, 3.B, 4.H, 5.A, 6.E His troops were short on amo, 7.G, 8.F)
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