PsikometrikPsikometrikadalah bidang yang berkaitan denganteoridan teknik dalampengukuranpendidikandanpsikologis, mencakup pengukuranpengetahuan, kemampuan,sikap, dan sifatkepribadian. Bidang ini terutama mempelajari perbedaan antar individu dan antar kelompok.Penelitiannya terutama pada: Pembuatan alat dan prosedur pengukuran, dan Pengembangan dan penyempurnaan pendekatan teoretis terhadap pengukuran.Kebanyakan dari kerja awal secara teoretis dan terapan dalam psikometrik dilakukan dalam upaya mengukurkecerdasan. Konsep kunci tradisional dalam teori tes klasikal adalahreliabilitasdanvaliditas. Alat ukur yang reliabel melakukan pengukuran dengan konsisten, sementara pengukuran yang valid adalah yang mengukur apa yang akan diukur.....................................................................Psychometricsis a field of study concerned with the theory and technique ofpsychologicalmeasurement. One part of the field is concerned with the objectivemeasurementof skills and knowledge, abilities, attitudes,personality traits, andeducational achievement. For example, some psychometric researchers have, thus far, concerned themselves with the construction and validation of assessment instruments such asquestionnaires,tests, raters' judgments, andpersonality tests. Another part of the field is concerned with statistical research bearing on measurement theory (e.g.,item response theory;intraclass correlation).As a result of these focuses, psychometric research involves two major tasks: (i) the construction of instruments; and (ii) the development of procedures for measurement. Practitioners are described as psychometricians. All psychometricians usually possess a specific qualification, and while most arepsychologistswith advanced graduate training, many work for the government or inhuman resourcesdepartments. Others specialize aslearning and developmentprofessionals.Historical foundation[edit]Psychological testing has come from two streams of thought: one, fromDarwin,Galton, andCattellon the measurement of individual differences, and the second, fromHerbart,Weber,Fechner, andWundtand their psychophysical measurements of a similar construct. The second set of individuals and their research is what has led to the development ofexperimental psychology, and standardized testing.[1]Victorian stream[edit]Charles Darwin was the inspiration behind Sir Francis Galton who led to the creation of psychometrics. In 1859, Darwin published his book "The Origin of Species", which pertained to individual differences in animals. This book discussed how individual members in aspeciesdiffer and how they possess characteristics that are more adaptive and successful or less adaptive and less successful. Those who are adaptive and successful are the ones that survive and give way to the next generation, who would be just as or more adaptive and successful. This idea, studied previously in animals, led to Galton's interest and study of human beings and how they differ one from another, and more importantly, how to measure those differences.Galton wrote a book entitled "Hereditary Genius" about different characteristics that people possess and how those characteristics make them more "fit" than others. Today these differences, such as sensory and motor functioning (reaction time, visual acuity, and physical strength) are important domains of scientific psychology. Much of the early theoretical and applied work in psychometrics was undertaken in an attempt to measureintelligence. Galton, often referred to as "the father of psychometrics," devised and included mental tests among hisanthropometricmeasures. James McKeen Cattell, who is considered a pioneer of psychometrics went on to extend Galton's work. Cattell also coined the termmental test, and is responsible for the research and knowledge which ultimately led to the development of modern tests. (Kaplan & Saccuzzo, 2010)German stream[edit]The origin of psychometrics also has connections to the related field ofpsychophysics. Around the same time that Darwin, Galton, and Cattell were making their discoveries, Herbart was also interested in "unlocking the mysteries of human consciousness" through the scientific method. (Kaplan & Saccuzzo, 2010) Herbart was responsible for creating mathematical models of the mind, which were influential in educational practices in years to come.E.H. Weber built upon Herbart's work and tried to prove the existence of a psychological threshold, saying that a minimum stimulus was necessary to activate a sensory system. After Weber, G.T. Fechner expanded upon the knowledge he gleaned from Herbart and Weber, to devise the law that the strength of a sensation grows as the logarithm of the stimulus intensity. A follower of Weber and Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt is credited with founding the science of psychology. It is Wundt's influence that paved the way for others to develop psychological testing.[1]20th century[edit]The psychometricianL. L. Thurstone, founder and first president of the Psychometric Society in 1936, developed and applied a theoretical approach to measurement referred to as thelaw of comparative judgment, an approach that has close connections to the psychophysical theory ofErnst Heinrich WeberandGustav Fechner. In addition, Spearman and Thurstone both made important contributions to the theory and application offactor analysis, a statistical method developed and used extensively in psychometrics.[citation needed]In the late 1950s,Leopold Szondimade an historical and epistemological assessment of the impact of statistical thinking onto psychology during previous few decades: "in the last decades, the specifically psychological thinking has been almost completely suppressed and removed, and replaced by a statistical thinking. Precisely here we see the cancer of testology and testomania of today."[2]More recently, psychometric theory has been applied in the measurement ofpersonality,attitudes, andbeliefs, andacademic achievement. Measurement of these unobservable phenomena is difficult, and much of the research and accumulated science in this discipline has been developed in an attempt to properly define and quantify such phenomena. Critics, including practitioners in thephysical sciencesandsocial activists, have argued that such definition and quantification is impossibly difficult, and that such measurements are often misused, such as with psychometric personality tests used in employment procedures:"For example, an employer wanting someone for a role requiring consistent attention to repetitive detail will probably not want to give that job to someone who is very creative and gets bored easily."[3]Figures who made significant contributions to psychometrics includeKarl Pearson,Henry F. Kaiser,Carl Brigham,L. L. Thurstone,Georg Rasch,Eugene Galanter,Johnson O'Connor,Frederic M. Lord,Ledyard R Tucker,Arthur Jensen, andDavid Andrich.Definition of measurement in the social sciences[edit]The definition of measurement in the social sciences has a long history. A currently widespread definition, proposed byStanley Smith Stevens(1946), is that measurement is "the assignment of numerals to objects or events according to some rule." This definition was introduced in the paper in which Stevens proposed fourlevels of measurement. Although widely adopted, this definition differs in important respects from the more classical definition of measurement adopted in the physical sciences, namely that scientific measurement entails "the estimation or discovery of the ratio of some magnitude of a quantitative attribute to a unit of the same attribute" (p.358)[4]Indeed, Stevens's definition of measurement was put forward in response to the British Ferguson Committee, whose chair, A. Ferguson, was a physicist. The committee was appointed in 1932 by the British Association for the Advancement of Science to investigate the possibility of quantitatively estimating sensory events. Although its chair and other members were physicists, the committee also included several psychologists. The committee's report highlighted the importance of the definition of measurement. While Stevens's response was to propose a new definition, which has had considerable influence in the field, this was by no means the only response to the report. Another, notably different, response was to accept the classical definition, as reflected in the following statement:Measurement in psychology and physics are in no sense different. Physicists can measure when they can find the operations by which they may meet the necessary criteria; psychologists have but to do the same. They need not worry about the mysterious differences between the meaning of measurement in the two sciences. (Reese, 1943, p. 49)These divergent responses are reflected in alternative approaches to measurement. For example, methods based oncovariance matricesare typically employed on the premise that numbers, such as raw scores derived from assessments, are measurements. Such approaches implicitly entail Stevens's definition of measurement, which requires only that numbers areassignedaccording to some rule. The main research task, then, is generally considered to be the discovery of associations between scores, and of factors posited to underlie such associations.[citation needed]On the other hand, when measurement models such as theRasch modelare employed, numbers are not assigned based on a rule. Instead, in keeping with Reese's statement above, specific criteria for measurement are stated, and the goal is to construct procedures or operations that provide data that meet the relevant criteria. Measurements are estimated based on the models, and tests are conducted to ascertain whether the relevant criteria have been met.[citation needed]Instruments and procedures[edit]The first[citation needed]psychometric instruments were designed to measure the concept ofintelligence. One historical approach involved theStanford-Binet IQ test, developed originally by the French psychologistAlfred Binet. Intelligence tests are useful tools for various purposes. An alternative conception of intelligence is that cognitive capacities within individuals are a manifestation of a general component, orgeneral intelligence factor, as well as cognitive capacity specific to a given domain.[citation needed]Psychometrics is applied widely[citation needed]in educational assessment to measure abilities in domains such asreading, writing, andmathematics. The main approaches in applying tests in these domains have beenClassical Test Theoryand the more recentItem Response TheoryandRaschmeasurement models. These latter approaches permit joint scaling of persons and assessment items, which provides a basis for mapping of developmental continua by allowing descriptions of the skills displayed at various points along a continuum.[citation needed]Another major focus in psychometrics has been onpersonalitytesting. There have been a range of theoretical approaches to conceptualizing and measuring personality. Some of the better known instruments include theMinnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, theFive-Factor Model(or "Big 5") and tools such asPersonality and Preference Inventoryand theMyers-Briggs Type Indicator. Attitudes have also been studied extensively using psychometric approaches.[citation needed]A common method in the measurement of attitudes is the use of theLikert scale. An alternative method involves the application of unfolding measurement models, the most general being the Hyperbolic Cosine Model (Andrich & Luo, 1993).[5]Theoretical approaches[edit]Psychometricians have developed a number of different measurement theories. These includeclassical test theory(CTT) anditem response theory(IRT).[6][7]An approach which seems mathematically to be similar to IRT but also quite distinctive, in terms of its origins and features, is represented by theRasch modelfor measurement. The development of the Rasch model, and the broader class of models to which it belongs, was explicitly founded on requirements of measurement in the physical sciences.[8]Psychometricians have also developed methods for working with large matrices of correlations and covariances. Techniques in this general tradition include:factor analysis,[9]a method of determining the underlying dimensions of data;multidimensional scaling,[10]a method for finding a simple representation for data with a large number of latent dimensions; anddata clustering, an approach to finding objects that are like each other. All these multivariate descriptive methods try to distill large amounts of data into simpler structures. More recently,structural equation modeling[11]andpath analysisrepresent more sophisticated approaches to working with largecovariance matrices. These methods allow statistically sophisticated models to be fitted to data and tested to determine if they are adequate fits.One of the main deficiencies in various factor analyses is a lack of consensus in cutting points for determining the number of latent factors. A usual procedure is to stop factoring wheneigenvaluesdrop below one because the original sphere shrinks. The lack of the cutting points concerns other multivariate methods, also.[citation needed]Key concepts[edit]Key concepts in classical test theory arereliabilityandvalidity. A reliable measure is one that measures a construct consistently across time, individuals, and situations. A valid measure is one that measures what it is intended to measure. Reliability is necessary, but not sufficient, for validity.Both reliability and validity can be assessed statistically. Consistency over repeated measures of the same test can be assessed with the Pearson correlation coefficient, and is often calledtest-retest reliability.[12]Similarly, the equivalence of different versions of the same measure can be indexed by aPearson correlation, and is calledequivalent forms reliabilityor a similar term.[12]Internal consistency, which addresses the homogeneity of a single test form, may be assessed by correlating performance on two halves of a test, which is termedsplit-half reliability; the value of thisPearson product-moment correlation coefficientfor two half-tests is adjusted with theSpearmanBrown prediction formulato correspond to the correlation between two full-length tests.[12]Perhaps the most commonly used index of reliability isCronbach's , which is equivalent to themeanof all possible split-half coefficients. Other approaches include theintra-class correlation, which is the ratio of variance of measurements of a given target to the variance of all targets.There are a number of different forms of validity. Criterion-related validity can be assessed by correlating a measure with a criterion measure theoretically expected to be related. When the criterion measure is collected at the same time as the measure being validated the goal is to establishconcurrent validity; when the criterion is collected later the goal is to establishpredictive validity. A measure hasconstruct validityif it is related to measures of other constructs as required by theory.Content validityis a demonstration that the items of a test do an adequate job of covering the domain being measured. In a personnel selection example, test content is based on a defined statement or set of statements of knowledge, skill, ability, or other characteristics obtained from ajob analysis.Item response theorymodels the relationship betweenlatent traitsand responses to test items. Among other advantages, IRT provides a basis for obtaining an estimate of the location of a test-taker on a given latent trait as well as the standard error of measurement of that location. For example, a university student's knowledge of history can be deduced from his or her score on a university test and then be compared reliably with a high school student's knowledge deduced from a less difficult test. Scores derived by classical test theory do not have this characteristic, and assessment of actual ability (rather than ability relative to other test-takers) must be assessed by comparing scores to those of a "norm group" randomly selected from the population. In fact, all measures derived from classical test theory are dependent on the sample tested, while, in principle, those derived from item response theory are not.Many psychometricians are also concerned with finding and eliminating testbiasfrom their psychological tests. Test bias is a form of systematic (i.e., non-random) error which leads to examinees from one demographic group having an unwarranted advantage over examinees from another demographic group.[13]According to leading experts, test bias may cause differences in average scores across demographic groups, but differences in group scores are not sufficient evidence that test bias is actually present because the test could be measuring real differences among groups.[14][15]Psychometricians use sophisticated scientific methods to search for test bias and eliminate it. Research shows that it is usually impossible for people reading a test item to accurately determine whether it is biased or not.[16]Standards of quality[edit]The considerations ofvalidityandreliabilitytypically are viewed as essential elements for determining thequalityof any test. However, professional and practitioner associations frequently have placed these concerns within broader contexts when developingstandardsand making overall judgments about the quality of any test as a whole within a given context. A consideration of concern in many applied research settings is whether or not the metric of a given psychological inventory is meaningful or arbitrary.[17]Testing standards[edit]In 2014, the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA), and National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) published a revision of theStandards for Educational and Psychological Testing,[18]which describes standards for test development, evaluation, and use. TheStandardscover essential topics in testing including validity, reliability/errors of measurement, and fairness in testing. The book also establishes standards related to testing operations including test design and development, scores, scales, norms, score linking, cut scores, test administration, scoring, reporting, score interpretation, test documentation, and rights and responsibilities of test takers and test users. Finally, theStandardscover topics related to testing applications, includingpsychological testing and assessment, workplace testing andcredentialing,educational testing and assessment, and testing inprogram evaluationand public policy.Evaluation standards[edit]In the field ofevaluation, and in particulareducational evaluation, theJoint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation[19]has published three sets of standards for evaluations.The Personnel Evaluation Standards[20]was published in 1988,The Program Evaluation Standards(2nd edition)[21]was published in 1994, andThe Student Evaluation Standards[22]was published in 2003.Each publication presents and elaborates a set of standards for use in a variety of educational settings. The standards provide guidelines for designing, implementing, assessing and improving the identified form of evaluation.[23]Each of the standards has been placed in one of four fundamental categories to promote educational evaluations that are proper, useful, feasible, and accurate. In these sets of standards, validity and reliability considerations are covered under the accuracy topic. For example, the student accuracy standards help ensure that student evaluations will provide sound, accurate, and credible information about student learning and performance.Non-human: animals and machines[edit]Psychometrics addresseshumanabilities, attitudes, traits and educational evolution. Notably, the study of behavior, mental processes and abilities of non-humananimalsis usually addressed bycomparative psychology, or with a continuum between non-human animals and the rest of animals byevolutionary psychology. Nonetheless there are some advocators for a more gradual transition between the approach taken for humans and the approach taken for (non-human) animals.[24][25][26][27]The evaluation of abilities, traits and learning evolution ofmachineshas been mostly unrelated to the case of humans and non-human animals, with specific approaches in the area ofartificial intelligence. A more integrated approach, under the name of universal psychometrics, has also been proposed.[28].....................................................Psikometri

Psikometrik adalah bidang studi yang berhubungan dengan teori dan teknik pengukuran pendidikan dan pengukuran psikologis, yang mencakup pengukuran pengetahuan, kemampuan, sikap, dan sifat-sifat kepribadian. lapangan terutama berkaitan dengan pembangunan dan validasi instrumen pengukuran, seperti kuesioner, tes, dan penilaian kepribadian.

Ini melibatkan dua tugas penelitian utama, yaitu:(i)pembangunan instrumen dan prosedur untuk pengukuran, dan(ii)pengembangan dan penyempurnaan pendekatan teoretis untuk pengukuran. Mereka yang psychometrics praktek dikenal sebagai psychometricians dan meskipun mereka mungkin juga psikolog klinis, mereka tidak wajib begitu dan bukannya bisa (misalnya) sumber daya manusia atau pembelajaran dan pengembangan profesional. Either way spesifik, terpisah, kualifikasi dalam psikometri diperlukan.

Asal-usul dan latar belakang

Banyak karya teoritis dan diterapkan pada awal psikometri dilakukan dalam upaya untuk mengukur kecerdasan. Francis Galton, sering disebut sebagai "bapak psychometrics", dirancang dan termasuk tes mental antara tindakan antropometri nya. Namun, asal psychometrics juga memiliki koneksi ke bidang terkait psychophysics. Dua pionir lainnya psychometrics diperoleh doktor di Leipzig Psychophysics Laboratorium bawah Wilhelm Wundt: James McKeen Cattell pada tahun 1886 dan Charles Spearman pada tahun 1906.

psikometrkian LL Thurstone, pendiri dan presiden pertama Masyarakat Psikometri pada tahun 1936, mengembangkan dan menerapkan pendekatan teoritis untuk pengukuran disebut sebagai hukum penilaian perbandingan, sebuah pendekatan yang memiliki hubungan dekat dengan teori psikofisik dari Ernst Heinrich Weber dan Gustav Fechner . Selain itu, Spearman dan Thurstone keduanya membuat kontribusi penting kepada teori dan penerapan analisis faktor, metode statistik dikembangkan dan digunakan secara luas di psikometri.

Baru-baru ini, teori psikometri telah diterapkan dalam pengukuran kepribadian, sikap, dan keyakinan, dan prestasi akademik. Pengukuran fenomena ini tidak teramati sulit, dan banyak penelitian dan ilmu pengetahuan akumulasi dalam disiplin ini telah dikembangkan dalam upaya untuk benar mendefinisikan dan mengukur fenomena tersebut. Kritik, termasuk praktisi dalam ilmu fisika dan aktivis sosial, berpendapat bahwa definisi tersebut dan kuantifikasi adalah mustahil sulit, dan bahwa pengukuran tersebut seringkali disalahgunakan, seperti dengan tes kepribadian psikometri yang digunakan dalam prosedur kerja:

"Misalnya, seseorang majikan ingin untuk peran yang membutuhkan perhatian yang konsisten untuk detail berulang mungkin tidak ingin memberikan pekerjaan yang dapat seseorang yang sangat kreatif dan mudah bosan."

Angka yang membuat kontribusi yang signifikan terhadap psikometri termasuk Karl Pearson, Henry F. Kaiser, LL Thurstone, Georg Rasch, Johnson O'Connor, Frederic M. Tuhan, Ledyard R Tucker, dan Arthur Jensen.

Definisi pengukuran dalam ilmu sosial

Definisi pengukuran dalam ilmu sosial memiliki sejarah yang panjang. Definisi yang luas saat ini, diusulkan oleh Stanley Smith Stevens (1946), adalah pengukuran yang adalah "penugasan angka ke obyek atau peristiwa menurut beberapa aturan". Definisi ini diperkenalkan di koran di mana Stevens mengusulkan empat tingkat pengukuran. Meskipun diadopsi secara luas, definisi ini berbeda dalam hal-hal penting dari definisi yang lebih klasik pengukuran diadopsi dalam ilmu fisika, yang merupakan pengukuran yang adalah estimasi numerik dan ekspresi besarnya satu kuantitas relatif terhadap yang lain (Michell, 1997).

Memang, definisi Stevens pengukuran dikemukakan sebagai tanggapan terhadap Inggris Ferguson Komite, yang kursi, A. Ferguson, seorang ahli fisika. Komite diangkat pada tahun 1932 oleh Asosiasi Inggris untuk Kemajuan Sains untuk menyelidiki kemungkinan kuantitatif memperkirakan peristiwa sensorik. Meskipun kursi dan anggota lainnya fisikawan, panitia juga termasuk beberapa psikolog. Laporan komite menyoroti pentingnya definisi pengukuran. Sementara respon Stevens adalah untuk mengajukan sebuah definisi baru, yang memiliki pengaruh besar di lapangan, ini tidak berarti tanggapan hanya untuk laporan. Lain, terutama yang berbeda, respon adalah untuk menerima definisi klasik, sebagaimana tercermin dalam pernyataan berikut:

"Pengukuran dalam psikologi dan fisika sama sekali tidak berbeda arti Fisikawan dapat mengukur ketika mereka dapat menemukan operasi dengan mana mereka dapat memenuhi kriteria yang diperlukan;. Psikolog tetapi untuk melakukan hal yang sama Mereka tidak perlu khawatir tentang perbedaan misterius antara makna. pengukuran dalam dua ilmu. " (Reese, 1943, hal 49)

Ini tanggapan yang berbeda ini tercermin dalam pendekatan alternatif untuk pengukuran. Sebagai contoh, metode berdasarkan matriks kovariansi biasanya digunakan pada premis bahwa angka, seperti nilai baku berasal dari penilaian, adalah pengukuran. Pendekatan tersebut memerlukan definisi implisit Stevens pengukuran, yang hanya memerlukan bahwa jumlah ditugaskan sesuai ketentuan beberapa. Tugas penelitian utama, kemudian, adalah umumnya dianggap penemuan asosiasi antara skor, dan faktor diketengahkan untuk mendasari hubungan tersebut.

Di sisi lain, ketika pengukuran model seperti model Rasch bekerja, jumlahnya tidak ditetapkan berdasarkan aturan. Sebaliknya, sesuai dengan pernyataan Reese di atas, kriteria khusus untuk pengukuran dinyatakan, dan tujuannya adalah untuk membangun prosedur atau operasi yang menyediakan data yang memenuhi kriteria yang relevan. Pengukuran diperkirakan berdasarkan model, dan tes dilakukan untuk memastikan apakah kriteria yang relevan telah dipenuhi.

Instrumen dan prosedur

Instrumen psikometri pertama dirancang untuk mengukur konsep kecerdasan. Pendekatan historis paling terkenal melibatkan tes Stanford-Binet IQ, yang dikembangkan awalnya oleh psikolog Alfred Binet Perancis. Berlawanan dengan kesalahpahaman yang cukup luas, tidak ada bukti kuat bahwa adalah mungkin untuk mengukur kecerdasan bawaan melalui instrumen tersebut, dalam arti kapasitas belajar bawaan tidak terpengaruh oleh pengalaman, juga tidak niat ini asli ketika mereka dikembangkan. Namun demikian, tes kecerdasan adalah alat yang berguna untuk berbagai tujuan. Sebuah konsepsi alternatif intelijen adalah bahwa kapasitas kognitif dalam diri seseorang adalah manifestasi dari komponen umum, atau faktor kecerdasan umum, serta kapasitas kognitif spesifik ke domain tertentu.

Psikometrik diterapkan secara luas dalam penilaian pendidikan untuk mengukur kemampuan dalam domain seperti membaca, menulis, dan matematika. Pendekatan utama dalam menerapkan tes di domain ini telah Teori Tes Klasik dan Item lebih baru Respon Teori dan model pengukuran Rasch. Pendekatan-pendekatan yang terakhir memungkinkan skala bersama orang-orang dan item penilaian, yang menyediakan dasar untuk pemetaan kontinum perkembangan dengan memungkinkan deskripsi keterampilan ditampilkan pada berbagai titik di sepanjang kontinum. pendekatan tersebut memberikan informasi yang kuat mengenai sifat pertumbuhan pembangunan dalam berbagai domain.

Fokus utama lain dalam psikometri telah di tes kepribadian. Ada berbagai pendekatan teoretis untuk konseptualisasi dan pengukuran kepribadian. Beberapa instrumen lebih dikenal termasuk Minnesota Multifase Personality Inventory, Model Lima Faktor (atau "Big 5") dan alat-alat seperti Kepribadian dan Preferensi Inventarisasi dan Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Sikap juga telah dipelajari secara ekstensif menggunakan pendekatan psikometri. Sebuah metode yang umum dalam pengukuran sikap adalah penggunaan skala Likert. Sebuah metode alternatif melibatkan penerapan model pengukuran berlangsung, yang paling umum menjadi hiperbolik Cosine Model (Andrich & Luo, 1993).

Pendekatan Teoritis

Psychometricians telah mengembangkan sejumlah teori pengukuran yang berbeda. Ini termasuk teori tes klasik (CTT) dan teori respon butir (IRT) Sebuah pendekatan yang tampaknya matematis untuk menjadi serupa dengan IRT tapi juga cukup berbeda, dalam hal asal-usulnya dan fitur, diwakili oleh model Rasch untuk pengukuran. Pengembangan model Rasch, dan kelas yang lebih luas model mana ia berasal, secara eksplisit didirikan pada persyaratan pengukuran dalam ilmu fisika.

Psychometricians juga telah mengembangkan metode untuk bekerja dengan matriks besar korelasi dan covariances. Teknik dalam tradisi umum meliputi: analisis faktor,sebuah cara menentukan dimensi yang mendasari data; skala multidimensi, metode untuk menemukan representasi sederhana untuk data dengan sejumlah besar dimensi laten, dan data clustering, pendekatan untuk menemukan obyek yang saling menyukai. Semua metode deskriptif multivariat mencoba untuk menyaring data dalam jumlah besar ke dalam struktur sederhana. Baru-baru ini, pemodelan persamaan strukturaldan analisis jalur merupakan pendekatan yang lebih canggih untuk bekerja sama dengan matriks kovarians besar. Metode ini memungkinkan model statistik yang canggih untuk dipasang ke data dan diuji untuk menentukan apakah mereka cocok memadai.

Salah satu kekurangan utama dalam analisis berbagai faktor kurangnya konsensus dalam memotong poin untuk menentukan jumlah faktor laten. Sebuah prosedur yang biasa adalah untuk menghentikan anjak ketika eigenvaluesturun di bawah satu karena menyusut bola asli. Kurangnya poin pemotongan keprihatinan metode multivariat lainnya, juga.

Konsep-konsep kunci

Konsep-konsep kunci dalam teori tes klasik adalah reliabilitas dan validitas. Sebuah ukuran yang dapat diandalkan adalah salah satu yang mengukur membangun secara konsisten di seluruh waktu, individu, dan situasi. Ukuran yang berlaku adalah salah satu yang langkah apa yang dimaksudkan untuk mengukur. mengukur mungkin dapat diandalkan tanpa berlaku. Namun, reliabilitas sangat diperlukan, tetapi tidak cukup, untuk validitas.

Kedua reliabilitas dan validitas dapat dinilai secara statistik. Konsistensi atas tindakan mengulangi dari pengujian yang sama dapat dinilai dengan koefisien korelasi Pearson, dan sering disebut-tes ulang uji reliabilitas Demikian pula, kesetaraan versi berbeda dari ukuran yang sama dapat diindeks oleh korelasi Pearson,. Dan disebut setara bentuk keandalan atau istilah yang serupa.

Internal konsistensi, yang membahas homogenitas bentuk tes tunggal, dapat dinilai dengan menghubungkan kinerja pada dua bagian dari tes, yang disebut reliabilitas split-setengah, nilai korelasi momen-produk Pearson koefisien dua tes setengah adalah disesuaikan dengan formula prediksi Spearman-Brown sesuai dengan korelasi antara dua tes full-length. Mungkin indeks yang paling umum digunakan adalah reliabilitas Cronbach, yang setara dengan rata-rata dari semua koefisien split-setengah mungkin. pendekatan lainnya termasuk hubungan intra-kelas, yang merupakan rasio varians dari pengukuran target yang diberikan kepada varians dari semua target.

Ada sejumlah bentuk yang berbeda dari validitas. Validitas Kriteria-istimewa dapat dinilai dengan menghubungkan suatu ukuran dengan ukuran kriteria diketahui berlaku. Ketika ukuran kriteria dikumpulkan pada waktu yang sama sebagai ukuran sedang divalidasi tujuannya adalah untuk menetapkan validitas konkuren, ketika kriteria dikumpulkan kemudian tujuannya adalah untuk menetapkan validitas prediktif. ukuran A memiliki validitas konstruk jika itu berhubungan dengan ukuran lain konstruksi sesuai dengan teori. validitas Konten adalah demonstrasi bahwa item tes diambil dari domain yang diukur. Dalam contoh seleksi personil, konten pengujian didasarkan pada pernyataan pasti atau set pernyataan pengetahuan, keterampilan, kemampuan, atau karakteristik lain yang diperoleh dari analisis jabatan.

Item respon model teori hubungan antara sifat-sifat laten dan tanggapan untuk menguji item. Di antara keuntungan lainnya, IRT memberikan dasar untuk memperoleh perkiraan lokasi seorang pengambil-test pada sifat laten yang diberikan serta standar error pengukuran lokasi itu. Sebagai contoh, pengetahuan mahasiswa tentang sejarah bisa dideduksi dari skor nya pada tes universitas dan kemudian dibandingkan dengan andal dengan pengetahuan seorang siswa sekolah menengah dideduksi dari tes terlalu sulit. Skor diperoleh oleh teori tes klasik tidak memiliki karakteristik, dan penilaian kemampuan aktual (daripada kemampuan relatif terhadap pengambil test lainnya-) harus dinilai dengan membandingkan skor untuk orang-orang "kelompok norma" yang dipilih secara acak dari populasi. Bahkan, semua tindakan berasal dari teori tes klasik tergantung pada sampel yang diuji, sedangkan, pada prinsipnya, yang berasal dari teori respon item tidak.

Standar kualitas

Pertimbangan validitas dan reliabilitas biasanya dipandang sebagai elemen penting untuk menentukan kualitas tes apapun. asosiasi Namun, profesional dan praktisi sering menempatkan masalah ini dalam konteks yang lebih luas ketika mengembangkan standar dan membuat penilaian secara keseluruhan tentang kualitas tes secara keseluruhan dalam konteks tertentu. Sebuah pertimbangan keprihatinan di banyak pengaturan penelitian yang digunakan adalah apakah metrik inventarisasi psikologis yang diberikan bermakna atau sewenang-wenang.

Pengujian standar

Dalam bidang ini, Standar Pendidikan dan Psikologis Pengujian standar tempat tentang validitas dan reliabilitas, bersama dengan kesalahan pengukuran dan pertimbangan terkait di bawah topik umum uji, evaluasi konstruksi dan dokumentasi. Topik utama kedua meliputi standar yang berkaitan dengan keadilan dalam pengujian, termasuk keadilan dalam menggunakan pengujian dan uji, hak dan tanggung jawab pengambil pengujian individu dari beragam latar belakang linguistik, dan pengujian individu dengan cacat. Topik utama ketiga dan terakhir meliputi standar yang berhubungan dengan aplikasi pengujian, termasuk tanggung jawab pengguna pengujian psikologis dan penilaian, pengujian dan penilaian pendidikan, pengujian dalam pekerjaan dan credentialing, ditambah pengujian dalam evaluasi program dan kebijakan publik.[Sunting] Standar Evaluasi

Dalam bidang evaluasi, dan evaluasi pendidikan tertentu, Komite Bersama Standar Evaluasi Pendidikantelah menerbitkan tiga set standar untuk evaluasi. Para Personil Evaluasi Standarditerbitkan pada tahun 1988, Program Evaluasi Standar (2nd edition) diterbitkan pada tahun 1994, dan Evaluasi Mahasiswa Standar diterbitkan pada tahun 2003.

Setiap publikasi menyajikan dan menguraikan serangkaian standar untuk digunakan dalam berbagai pengaturan pendidikan. Standar memberikan pedoman untuk merancang, melaksanakan, menilai dan memperbaiki bentuk evaluasi diidentifikasi. Masing-masing standar telah ditempatkan dalam salah satu dari empat kategori dasar untuk mempromosikan evaluasi pendidikan yang layak, berguna, layak, dan akurat. Dalam set standar, validitas dan reliabilitas pertimbangan yang tercakup dalam topik akurasi. Sebagai contoh, standar mahasiswa keakuratan membantu memastikan bahwa evaluasi siswa akan memberikan informasi suara, akurat, dan kredibel tentang belajar siswa dan kinerja.............................................1.0 BACKGROUND AND PREMISES1.1 Interaction Analysis1Interaction Analysis as we describe it here is an interdisciplinary method for the empirical investigation of the interaction of human beings with each other and with objects in their environment. It investigates human activities such as talk, nonverbal interaction, and the use of artifacts and technologies, identifying routine practices and problems and the resources for their solution. Its roots lie in ethnography (especially participant observation), sociolinguistics, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, kinesics, proxemics, and ethology.Video technology has been vital in establishing Interaction Analysis which depends on the technology of audiovisual recording for its primary records and on playback capability2for their analysis. Only electronic recording produces the kind of data corpus that allows the close interrogation required for Interaction Analysis. In particular, it provides the crucial ability to replay a sequence of interaction repeatedly for multiple viewers, and on multiple occasions.Interaction Analysis as a distinct method is just beginning to be differentiated from other kinds of video-based analyses. It is not taught per se in any university curriculum; however, there is a growing number of practitioners doing video-based Interaction-Analytic work who contribute methods, approaches, and findings to the practices of an emerging community of practitioners of Interaction Analysis. In this paper we describe the work of researchers loosely associated in one way or another with two laboratories dedicated to Interaction Analysis: the first operated at Michigan State University (MSU) between 1975 and 1988; the second functions as a joint venture between Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL) in Palo Alto, California. While the MSU Interaction Analysis Laboratory often focused on medical settings, the Palo Alto group is particularly concerned with the study of human-machine interaction, collaborative design practice, and the situated nature of skill and knowledge acquisition3. Both laboratories have had on-going work groups and a policy of encouraging participation by researchers seeking to learn about Interaction Analysis.1.2 Framing AssumptionsNo method is without theoretical assumptions. Methods, far from being neutral tools, promote both concrete working practices and theoretical ideas. Practitioners of Interaction Analysis, though they come from many different disciplines and use the results of their analyses for many different purposes, also share a more or less explicit view of the world that is displayed and reinforced by the work of doing this kind of analysis. Furthermore, they hold a common set of ideas about how to gain access to that world, i.e. what are possible "ways into" the phenomena of interest. A clear formulation of these framing assumptions does not yet exist, and there is likely to be some disagreement about which assumptions are more or less fundamental. Nevertheless, we believe it is important to begin to make the theoretical grounding of our work explicit. The following comments are offered in the hope of stimulating increasing clarity as Interaction Analysis emerges as a coherent way of doing analytic work.One basic underlying assumption in Interaction Analysis is that knowledge and action are fundamentally social in origin, organization, and use, and are situated in particular social and material ecologies. Thus, expert knowledge and practice are seen not so much as located in the heads of individuals but as situated in the interactions between members of a particular community engaged with the material world. Seeing cognition as socially and ecologically distributed has methodological consequences: Interaction Analysis finds its basic data for theorizing about knowledge and practice not in traces of cranial activity (for example, protocol or survey interview data), but in the details of social interactions in time and space, and particularly in the naturally occurring, everyday interactions between members of communities of practice4. On this view, artifacts and technologies set up a social field within which certain activities become very likely, others possible, and still others very improbable or impossible. The goal of Interaction Analysis, then, is to identify regularities in the ways in which participants utilize the resources of the complex social and material world of actors and objects within which they operate.Another widely shared assumption among practitioners of Interaction Analysis is that verifiable observation provides the best foundation for analytic knowledge of the world. This view implies a commitment to grounding theories of knowledge and action in empirical evidence, that is, to building generalizations from records of particular, naturally occurring activities, and steadfastly holding our theories accountable to that evidence. Underlying this attitude is the assumption that the world is accessible ansensible not only to participants in daily human interaction but also to analysts when they observe such interaction on videotape. Analytic work, then, draws, at least in part, on our experience and expertise as competent members of ongoing social systems and functioning communities of practice.While not yet well articulated, the domain of questions of interest to Interaction Analysis revolves around the achievement of social order (and ordering) in everyday settings. A set of "analytic foci" (see section 6) is emerging that begins to specify the domain of questions that Interaction Analysis asks of the world represented on tape. Predominant among these are questions having to do with how people make sense of each others' actions as meaningful, orderly, and projectable.5Since locally sensible interaction is seen as the collaborative achievement of participants, our work as analysts lies precisely in specifying the ways in which participants make this orderliness and projectability apparent to each other and incidentally to us, the analysts. We look for the mechanisms through which participants assemble and employ the social and material resources inherent in their situations for getting their mutual dealings done.As we apply Interaction Analysis to learning processes, these same kinds of framing assumptions remain relevant. Interaction-Analytic studies see learning as a distributed, ongoing social process, where evidence that learning is occurring or has occurred must be found in understanding the ways in which people collaborativelydo learning anddorecognizing learning as having occurred (Garfinkel, 1967). The following sections are devoted to explicating these notions..............................What is Discourse Analysis?Discourse can be defined in three ways: Language beyond the level of a sentence Language behaviours linked to social practices Language as a system of thought

Discourse Analysis (DA) is a modern discipline of the social sciences that covers a wide variety of differentsociolinguisticapproaches. It aims to study and analyse the use of discourse in at least one of the three ways stated above, and more often than not, all of them at once. Analysis of discourse looks not only at the basic level of what is said, but takes into consideration the surrounding social and historical contexts. As Sam Kirkham mentions in the video below, making the distinction between whether a person is described as a terrorist or a freedom fighter is something DA would look at, whilst considering the implications of each term. To expand, 'terrorist' is a term that brings negative connotations of evil and violence, whereas 'freedom fighter' has positive connotations of fighting towards political upheaval of dictatorships. So, one term is looked upon a lot more favourably than the other, and this is what a Discourse Analyst would consider, as well as looking at the relationship of these terms with a widely used term such as Muslim. Discourse analysts will look at any given text, and this just means anything that communicates a message, and particularly, how that message constructs a social reality or view of the world.A sub-discipline of DA is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and this looks at discourse from a politically motivated level. An analyst in this field will identify a topic for analysis, and then collect a corpus of texts, before finally analysing it to identify how language is used to reproduce ideologies in the text. A corpus is large, structured electronic database of texts, often used in linguistics. Using a corpus isn't the only method of analysis in CDA, as any method which provides an insight into ideology in discourse is accepted by researchers. CDA will look at the different levels of a text; the macro, meso and micro levels, but this is discussed more in depth in theExample Researchsection.................................................................Discourse analysis(DA), ordiscourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyze written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significantsemioticevent.The objects of discourse analysisdiscourse, writing, conversation, communicativeeventare variously defined in terms of coherent sequences ofsentences,propositions,speech, orturns-at-talk. Contrary to much of traditional linguistics, discourse analysts not only study language use 'beyond the sentence boundary', but also prefer to analyze 'naturally occurring' language use, and not invented examples.Text linguisticsis a closely related field. The essential difference between discourse analysis and text linguistics is that discourse analysis aims at revealing socio-psychological characteristics of a person/persons rather than text structure.[1]Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety ofsocial sciencedisciplines, includinglinguistics, education,sociology,anthropology,social work,cognitive psychology,social psychology,area studies,cultural studies,international relations,human geography,communication studies, andtranslation studies, each of which is subject to its own assumptions, dimensions of analysis, and methodologies.......................................Topics of interest[edit]Topics of discourse analysis include:[citation needed] The various levels or dimensions of discourse, such assounds(intonation, etc.),gestures,syntax, thelexicon,style,rhetoric,meanings,speech acts, moves,strategies, turns, and other aspects ofinteraction Genresof discourse (various types of discourse in politics, the media, education, science, business, etc.) The relations between discourse and theemergence of syntactic structure The relations between text (discourse) andcontext The relations between discourse andpower The relations between discourse andinteraction The relations between discourse andcognitionandmemoryPolitical discourse[edit]Political discourse analysis is a field of discourse analysis which focuses on discourse in political forums (such as debates, speeches, and hearings) as the phenomenon of interest.Policy analysisrequires discourse analysis to be effective from thepost-positivistperspective.Political discourse is the informal exchange of reasoned views as to which of several alternative courses of action should be taken to solve a societal problem.[2]History[edit]The examples and perspective in this articledeal primarily with the United States and do not represent aworldwide viewof the subject.Pleaseimprove this articleand discuss the issue on thetalk page.(December 2010)

Although the ancient Greeks (among others) had much to say on discourse, some scholars[which?]consider the Austrian emigreLeo Spitzer'sStilstudien[Style Studies] of 1928 the earliest example ofdiscourse analysis(DA). It was translated into French byMichel Foucault.However, the term first came into general use following the publication of a series of papers byZellig Harrisbeginning in 1952 and reporting on work from which he developedtransformational grammarin the late 1930s. Formal equivalence relations among the sentences of a coherent discourse are made explicit by using sentence transformations to put the text in a canonical form. Words and sentences with equivalent information then appear in the same column of an array. This work progressed over the next four decades (see references) into a science ofsublanguageanalysis (Kittredge & Lehrberger 1982), culminating in a demonstration of the informational structures in texts of a sublanguage of science, that of immunology, (Harris et al. 1989) and a fully articulated theory of linguistic informational content (Harris 1991). During this time, however, most linguists ignored these developments in favor of a succession of elaborate theories of sentence-level syntax and semantics.[3]In January, 1953, a linguist working for the American Bible Society,James A. Lauriault/Loriot, needed to find answers to some fundamental errors in translating Quechua, in the Cuzco area of Peru. Following Harris's 1952 publications, he worked over the meaning and placement of each word in a collection of Quechua legends with a native speaker of Quechua and was able to formulate discourse rules that transcended the simple sentence structure. He then applied the process to Shipibo, another language of Eastern Peru. He taught the theory at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Oklahoma, in the summers of 1956 and 1957 and entered the University of Pennsylvania to study with Harris in the interim year. He tried to publish a paperShipibo Paragraph Structure, but it was delayed until 1970 (Loriot & Hollenbach 1970).[citation needed]In the meantime, Dr.Kenneth Lee Pike, a professor at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, taught the theory, and one of his students,Robert E. Longacredeveloped it in his writings.Harris's methodology disclosing the correlation of form with meaning was developed into a system for the computer-aided analysis of natural language by a team led byNaomi SageratNYU, which has been applied to a number of sublanguage domains, most notably to medical informatics. The software for theMedical Language Processoris publicly available onSourceForge.In the late 1960s and 1970s, and without reference to this prior work, a variety of other approaches to a new cross-discipline of DA began to develop in most of the humanities and social sciences concurrently with, and related to, other disciplines, such assemiotics,psycholinguistics,sociolinguistics, andpragmatics. Many of these approaches, especially those influenced by the social sciences, favor a more dynamic study of oral talk-in-interaction. An example is "conversational analysis", which was influenced by the Sociologist Harold Garfinkel, the founder ofEthnomethodology.In Europe,Michel Foucaultbecame one of the key theorists of the subject, especially of discourse, and wroteThe Archaeology of Knowledge. In this context, the term 'discourse' no longer refers to formal linguistic aspects, but to institutionalized patterns of knowledge that become manifest in disciplinary structures and operate by the connection of knowledge and power. Since the 1970s, Foucaults works have had an increasing impact especially on discourse analysis in the social sciences. Thus, in modern European social sciences, one can find a wide range of different approaches working with Foucaults definition of discourse and his theoretical concepts. Apart from the original context in France, there is, at least since 2005, a broad discussion on socio-scientific discourse analysis in Germany. Here, for example, thesociologistReiner Kellerdeveloped his widely recognized 'Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD)'.[4]Following thesociology of knowledgebyPeter L. BergerandThomas Luckmann, Keller argues, that our sense of reality in everyday life and thus the meaning of every objects, actions and events are the product of a permanent, routinized interaction. In this context, SKAD has been developed as a scientific perspective that is able to understand the processes of 'The Social Construction of Reality' on all levels of social life by combining Michel Foucault's theories of discourse and power with the theory of knowledge by Berger/Luckmann. Whereas the latter primarily focus on the constitution and stabilisation of knowledge on the level of interaction, Foucault's perspective concentrates on institutional contexts of the production and integration of knowledge, where the subject mainly appears to be determined by knowledge and power. Therefore, the 'Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse' can also be seen as an approach to deal with the vividly discussedmicro-macro problemin sociology.Perspectives[edit]The following are some of the specific theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches used in linguistic discourse analysis: Applied linguistics Cognitive neuroscience of discourse comprehension[5][6] Cognitive psychology, studying the production and comprehension of discourse. Conversation analysis Critical discourse analysis Discursive psychology Emergent grammar Ethnography of communication Functional grammar Interactional sociolinguistics Mediated Stylistics Pragmatics Response based therapy(counselling) Rhetoric Stylistics (linguistics) Sublanguageanalysis Tagmemics Text linguistics Variation analysisAlthough these approaches emphasize different aspects of language use, they all view language as social interaction, and are concerned with the social contexts in which discourse is embedded.Often a distinction is made between 'local' structures of discourse (such as relations among sentences, propositions, and turns) and 'global' structures, such as overall topics and the schematic organization of discourses and conversations. For instance, many types of discourse begin with some kind of global 'summary', in titles, headlines, leads, abstracts, and so on.A problem for the discourse analyst is to decide when a particular feature is relevant to the specification is required. Are there general principles which will determine the relevance or nature of the specification.[7].................................................Defining Ethnography and CultureThis chapter is dedicated to ethnographic research. Ethnography is the study of cultures through close observation, reading, and interpretation. Ethnographic researchers work in the field, in the culture which they are studying. The activities they conduct are also often called fieldwork. Ethnographic researchers learn how to recognize traits that make up a culture and how to describe it to others. As a research method, ethnography is used in many disciplines, among them anthropology, political and social studies, education, and others. Because ethnography is the study of cultures, before going any further, it is important to define the word culture.Exploration Activity: Defining Culture

Working in a small group or with the rest of the class, brainstorm a list of definitions of the word culture. Keep in mind that to ethnographers, this term encompasses much more than the high culture of museums, concert halls, and libraries.

After completing your list, share your definitions with your classmates. Also, compare your lists with the definitions offered by expert-ethnographers below.As you worked on this activity, you probably noticed that the word culture is rather difficult to define. In his 1985 workMirror for Man: The Relation of Anthropology to Modern Life, anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn offers the following definitions of culture.1. The total way of life of a people2. The social legacy the individual acquires from his group3. A way of thinking, feeling, and believing4. An abstraction from behavior5. A theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a group of people in fact behave6. A storehouse of pooled learning7. Learned behavior8. A set of techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men9. A behavioral map, sieve, or matrixIn his 1973 textThe Interpretation of Cultures, another prominent anthropologist and ethnographer Clifford Geertz wrote that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after. . . .. (4-5).

There are several important terms in both Kluckhohns and Geertzs definitions of culture that would help us better understand the purposes, nature, and methods of ethnographic research. Firstly, all the definitions of culture speak of is a social phenomenon. Kluckhohn calls is a total way of life of a people and a storehouse of pooled learning. Presumably the learning is pooled from all the members of a given society or culture. Geertz talks of humans as being suspended in webs of significance, not independent but tied to their environments. Secondly, cultures are distinguished by patterns that repeat themselves. These parents can be noticed, studied, and explained. The job on an ethnographer is to find, record, and interpret such parents.

Notice that the definitions of the word culture offered above encompass the complete scope of human activity. Culture is not just the behavior and habits of high society, or of cultured people. It is not only the ability to appreciate art, music, and fine literature, although people who can do that also belong to particular cultures, and those cultures can be studied by ethnographers.

Ethnographers define the word culture in broader terms, as a patterned behavior or way of life of a group of people. Some of the elements of culture then are the common habits, customs, traditions, histories, and geographieseverything that connect the members of the culture together and defines them. In his 1958 essay Culture is Ordinary, author Raymond Williams developed a definition of what he called ordinary culture.

Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact. Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery, writing themselves into the land. The growing society is there, yet it is also made and remade in every individual mind. The making of a mind is, first, the slow learning of shapes, purposes, and meanings, so that work, observation and communication are possible. Then, second, but equal in importance, is the testing of these in experience, the making of new observations, comparisons, and meanings. A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested. These are the ordinary processes of human societies and human minds, and we see through them the nature of a culture: that it is always both traditional and creative; that it is both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings. We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a whole way of life--the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning--the special processes of discovery and creative effort. Some writers reserve the word for one or other of these senses; I insist on both, and on the significance of their conjunction. The questions I ask about our culture are questions about deep personal meanings. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind. (6).

Williams definition of culture confirms what we have already seen---that the most important and interesting elements of a culture for an ethnographer are patterns of behavior and function of the people who comprise the culture under investigation. According to Williams, the ordinary processes of human societies taken, studied, and explained in their totality give us an understanding of a given culture.

Exploration Activity: Subcultures To Which You Belong.

Working either on your own or with a partner make a list of subcultures to which you belong. Because the scope of ethnographic research includes both high and ordinary cultures, include both types in your list. It may be useful to begin this activity by thinking about the groups and communities, both formal and informal, to which you belong. Consider such factors as national and cultural, and local origin, ethnicity, language and dialect, social class, interests and hobbies, profession, family status and values, and so on.

Share the results of your brainstorming with the rest of the class.

Ethnographic Research is Qualitative

As a writer of school research papers, you may be used to conducting quantitative research. Quantitative research seeks to obtain data which are applicable to large populations, and a broad spectrum of projects and situations, It also often seeks to obtain results that can be repeated in other situations.

For example, researchers deciding to conduct a national poll designed to predict the results of a presidential election, they will use statistical methods to come up with numbers and other data capable of predicting the election results nationwide. Quantitative research seeks to create sets of data which can be used to explain and interpret large-scale phenomena and patterns and which does that through numbers or some other quantifiable means.

By contrast, qualitative research has a different purpose. As its name suggests, qualitative research is interested in conducting in-depth studies of smaller populations and groups. They do not seek to obtain data that can be applied across the board, instead trying to find out as much as possible about a smaller sample or a smaller phenomenon. Qualitative researchers do not use statistics. Instead, they observe, conduct interviews and surveys.

Ethnographic research is qualitative. Ethnographers do not apply the results of their studies of one particular culture to other cultures. They do not apply statistical methods of quantification to the results of their research. They are more interested in descriptions than in statistics.

Why is it important to understand the difference between these two kinds of research? There are at least two reasons. Firstly, writers who are used to producing traditional research papers with their almost-universal insistence on objectivity and broad applicability of results may wonder about the reliability of qualitative research. After all, they may think, what good is a research methods, if it does not allow us to apply the results of research to other situations and other populations, and if it cannot be replicated? This is a matter of purpose with which research is conducted. If, for example, as in the instance described earlier, the purpose of a research project is to find out what the population of a whole country thinks about an issue, then quantitative research methods will work well. If, on the other hand, the purpose of the researcher is to conduct an in-depth study of a culture, qualitative research will suite than purpose better. Secondly, beginning ethnographers need to understand that, when conducting ethnographic research, it is often more important to go for depth than for breadth in their investigation. They need not worry that their results would not be applicable to other cultures and other research situations because they do not have to be. The goal of an ethnographer is to create a deep and credible snapshot of a culture that he or she is studying. The results of this investigation may inform and be cited by other researchers, but it will not be directly applicable to other cultures and other research projects.

Ethnographic Research is Subjective

One of the main tasks of an ethnographer is to learn to discern the unusual in the usual. Experienced ethnographers realize that what seems mundane and ordinary to them many look strange and unusual to others. According to ethnographers Bonnie Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, when someone says thats really weird or arent they strange, a fieldworker hears these comments as signals for investigation. (2001, 6).

If this is the case, then the interpretation of a culture is necessarily biased and subjective. When we step into a new culture, we bring with us our previous experiences, preconceptions, and ideas. An objective observation devoid of the observers pre-existing attitudes, is simply impossible. But that is not a problem for ethnographers. Instead, it is an opportunity because ethnographers benefit from being involved with the cultures they are studying. They know those cultures well and are therefore able to convey their meanings to others. Being an insider of a culture, a participant-observer often allows ethnographers to uncover hidden meanings that are not immediately visible or accessible to outsiders.

Consider the following example. In his 1977 work entitled Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, Geertz describes how, while studying cock fighting in Bali, the author and his wife had to escape a police raid at one of the cock fighting rings. Geertz writes,

"On the established anthropological principle, When in Rome, my wife and I decided, only slightly less instantaneously than everyone else, that the thing to do was run too. We ran down the main street. About halfway down another fugitive ducked suddenly into a compoundhis own, it turned outand we, seeing nothing ahead of us but rice fields, open country, and a very high volcano, followed him. As the three of us came tumbling into the courtyard, his wife, who had apparently been through this sort of thing before, whipped out a table, a tablecloth, three chairs, and three cups of tea, and we all, without any explicit communication whatsoever, sat down, commenced to sip tea, and sought to compose ourselves (307)."

The remarkable feature of this passage is the presence of the researcher in the midst of the events he is studying and his ability to write about the events from not from the point of view of a detached observer, but as a participant. Geertz and his wife go to see an outlawed cockfight, are chased by police, and end up in a locals backyard sipping tea and pretending that they had not broken the law. It is true that, as a European researcher, Geertz is not writing about a culture that is his. At the same time, having participated in the same activities as the Balinese whom he came to observe regularly partake in, he began to gain the status of an insider. That status, in turn, gave him larger access to the culture and more authority to write about it.

The ethnographer is always present in the research he or she conducts and the texts he or she creates. It is not only normal but also customary and necessary for ethnographers to write themselves into their texts by providing narratives and descriptions of their own role in the project and of their reactions to the cultures which they observe and try to understand. In his 1988 book Works and Lives: The Ethnographer as Author, Clifford Geertz explains:

"The ability of anthropologists to get us to take what they say seriously has less to do with either a factual look or an air of conceptual elegance than it has with their capacity to convince us that what they say is a result of their having actually penetrated (or, if you prefer, been penetrated by) another form of life, one way or another, truly been there. And that, persuading us that the offstage miracle has occurred, is where the writing comes in (4-5)."

Ethnography is then a rhetorical act, and the ethnographer must not only collect credible research data, but also write about them credibly and persuasively.

Learning to Ask Ethnographic Questions

It is important for every researcher to learn to ask the kinds of research questions that will help him or her succeed in the research project. Ethnographic research is no exception. Ethnographic research questions must be such that will enable you to not only observe the culture you are studying, but also to discern and understand the patterns of behavior and function in that culture. In other words, it is not sufficient for an ethnographer to record what he or she sees. In addition, ethnographic researcher must construct the research questions which would allow him or her to explain or interpret the culture he or she is studying.

Ethnographic questions, are different from those asked by new media reporters who are sent to the scene of an event to observe and record it. According to Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater:

An ethnographer and a journalist may both gather information about the same event but write up their accounts very differently. A standard daily newspaper reporter, for example, conducts research in an attempt to be objective: to give the who, what, where, when, and why of an event for a readership that expects facts without too much interpretation. As a fieldworker, your purpose is to collect and consider multiple sources of information, not facts alone, to convey the perspective of the people about the culture you study (1997, 13-14)."

As an ethnographer, you are, of course, interested not only in the facts but also in what those facts mean and how they might help you to explain the culture you are studying. Therefore, you will need to create the kinds of research questions which would answer not only what is happening in front of your eyes but also why it is happening and what its significance is for the culture you are investigating. You also need to ask the kinds of questions that would help you discern patterns in the events or behaviors you observe, you make connections between people, incidents, and events.

In order to create such questions, consider the following guidelines: Once you have observed and recorded the facts pertaining to your culture, consider using methods other than observation. You may, for instance collect artifacts that would help you explain what you saw. Or, you may decide to conduct interviews with the participants of the events you have been observing. Ask yourself what the events or behaviors you have observed means for the culture. What is their significance for the members of the culture and how it might be different from you or your readers ascribe to these events. If there is such a difference, what would you do as a researcher and a writer to explain the events or behavior to outsiders? Ask yourself about your subjective responses and reactions to what you are observing. How do your existing experiences, ideas, biases, and cultural affiliations contribute to your understanding of the culture you are studying?

Ethnographic Research Methods

Observing

Throughout this chapter, I have mentioned the word observation many times. Indeed, observing the culture is an excellent method of studying it. Observation is one of the main research methods available to ethnographers. The way in which you plan and conduct your ethnographic observation is determined by your overall goals as an ethnographer, which is not only to notice interesting features of the culture you are studying, but also to discern patterns among those events and to explain those patterns and their significance to your readers. In planning and conducting your observations, follow the following guidelines: Ask for permission to observe. Your research subjects must be aware of the fact that they are being observed. Not only is this a sound practice or ethical research, but it will also help you later on to approach the members of the culture you are studying with interview and survey requests, if you need them. Let your subjects know that you are there, and then be as unobtrusive as possible. If you need to talk to any of the members of the culture you are studying, you can ask for an interview later. Keep careful notes. Record events, language and other interactions between the people you are observing as well as their surroundings.As I mentioned before, it is important to realize that, while observing, you may or may not be able to detach yourself completely from the events or people around you. As you saw in the except from Clifford Geertzs study of Balinese cock-fighting which I quoted above, ethnographers often become willing or unwilling participants in the cultures they study. While something as dramatic as what happened to Geertz in the passage I have quoted earlier, may not happen to you during your research, if you become an unwilling (or willing) participant of the events, know that this is a part of being an ethnographer.

Interviewing

In addition to observing the cultures they study, ethnographers conduct interviews with the members of that culture. Interviewing your research subjects allows you to obtain an in-depth perspective of their culture that is hardly possible through observation alone. If you consider interviewing someone for your ethnographic project, keep in mind the following considerations:

In designing the interview, always keep your purpose in mind. As author Ben Rafoth (2001) reminds us, The first step in getting someone to tell you something you are interested in hearing is to tell them exactly why you want to interview them. When you explain a clear purpose, the purpose you are interviewing understands what they need to talk about to satisfy you. Without this sense of purpose, they dont know whether you want to hear facts, stories, advice, complaints, or whatever (83). In other words, it is not good enough to begin the interview with someone only with a vague idea about what you are interested in. If you go into an interview without a clear purpose, both you are your interviewee are likely to leave the session dissatisfied, frustrated, and wondering why you had wasted time on the interview at all.

Next, allow plenty of time for contacting the person who interests you and scheduling the meeting. People who have interesting things to say usually have busy schedules and cannot be expected to give interviews on a short notice. Sometimes, you may be able to squeeze a short interview in during your ethnographic observation session, but if you want a longer, more structured interview session with someone, plan ahead and contact them with the interview request sooner rather than later.

It is also important to resent yourself as a friendly, interested, and enthusiastic interlocutor. If you arrive at the interview disinterested, distracted, and unorganized, your interviewee may wonder whether you really need the interview and whether he or she should waste time with you.

Whenever possible, learn as much background information about the subject of your interview as possible. Of course, when interviewing someone, you are looking for new knowledge, and one of the reasons why you have asked this person for an interview is because he or she has the information or opinions that you dont have. At the same time, remember that every interview is a conversation, and it helps if both sides at least have the common knowledge of the basics of the subject of this conversation.

Design and ask the right questions. When interviewing someone, it is generally better to have more open-ended questions. An open-ended question is one that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Remembers that successful interviewers encourage their interlocutors to speaks as much as possible, and open-ended questions help them achieve that goal.Rafoth cites writer Robert Weiss recommends that interviewers allow their subjects to develop their answers in such a way that gives the interview additional depth. Here are some of Weisss suggestions designed to help interviewers help their subjects develop their answers further. Extending questions: What led to that? How did that start? Filling in detail: Could you walk me through the event? Identifying key actors and agents: Who else was involved? Inner events, How did that make you feel? (Rafoth 83)If the interview is taking an unexpected, but interesting direction, allow your interviewee to lead you. You cannot always predict what interesting or useful information your interlocutor may want to share with you during the interview. While it is important to keep in mind the your interviews overall purpose and try to accomplish it, allowing your subject to tell you something unplanned for will probably make the result deeper and more interesting.

Collecting and Reading Cultural Artifacts

Another research technique designed to help ethnographers study cultures is the collection of artifacts (objects) that might help them understand that culture and explain it to their readers. In deciding which artifacts to collect and what to do with them, you should, first of all, be guided by the idea that artifacts are texts that can and should be read together with other research data. The meaning of cultural artifacts within the culture which you are studying contributes to the meaning of the culture overall. As Bonnie Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater (1007) argue,

Objects, then, are readable texts. As you read an object, your position as researcher affects your reading just as it affects the way you read a field site. You can investigate the surface details of an object, research its history, or learn about peoples rules and rituals for using and making the object. Researchersfolklorists and anthropologistsuse the term material culture to refer to those objects, personal artifacts loaded with meanings and history that people mark as special: tools, musical instruments, foods, toys, jewelry, ceremonial objects, and clothes (78).

A successful ethnographic researchers, then, would not just collect these objects and describe them in the project, but also try to figure out what the mean for the people of the culture he or she is trying to understand and how that meaning may help them shape their texts that they offer to the readers. Because objects are texts, they hardly possess meanings of their own. Your task as a researcher is to make that meaning by actively reading an artifact.

As you think about collecting cultural artifacts for your ethnographic projects, consider the following guidelines: While observing a culture and talking to its members, pay attention to the items around you and to what the people in the culture do with those items. Pay attention to the items that seem important, useful, or indispensable to the members of the culture. Begin by noticing the appearance, size, texture, and other visible qualities of the artifact. Talk to the members of the culture you are studying to learn about the artifacts purpose, history, peculiar features, and so on. Notice ways in which the artifact is being used by the members of the culture Compare your observations of the object with the descriptions and remarks you hear from the members of the culture Think about the artifact metaphorically or symbolically. Behind its physical reality, what can the artifact symbolize or stand for in the culture that you are studying? Thinking about artifacts in this way will help you to go beyond simply describing them and into making conclusions and generalizations about the artifacts meaning for the culture you are studying.

Conducting Secondary Research

Such primary research methods as interviewing, observing, and reading of cultural artifacts are central to ethnography. It may be tempting to think of ethnography depends exclusively on primary sources and methods. That is not the case, however, as ethnographers usually use a variety of secondary sources, both print and electronic ones, in their work.

Using secondary sources allows you to add texture to your work. Secondary research helps ethnographers to broaden their work by explaining the cultures they study in larger historical, geographical, and political contexts. Studying a culture through observations and interviews is an interesting and useful endeavor capable of teaching you and your readers a lot. But, like any writing that neglects secondary sources, such research provides you only with one perspective of your subject. Throughout this book, I have been arguing about the importance of research for all writing, and writing based on ethnographic research is no exception. Adding secondary research to your primary source investigation will allow both you and your readers to gains another perspective about your subject. Consider using the following type of secondary research sources for your ethnographic projects: Any theoretical, historical, or cultural studies devoted to the subject of your investigation. Any studies of the cultural artifacts that you have collected as a part of your project. Other ethnographic accounts of the culture you are studying. Texts produced by the culture you are studying. Sources of this type will particularly help you to understand the discourse of the culture you are studying. These sources can be of many types: books, journal and magazine articles, websites, and so on.Of course, all sources, both primary and secondary, will have to be properly cited and documented in your text.......................................Qualitative ApproachesA qualitative "approach" is a general way of thinking about conducting qualitative research. It describes, either explicitly or implicitly, the purpose of the qualitative research, the role of the researcher(s), the stages of research, and the method of data analysis. here, four of the major qualitative approaches are introduced.EthnographyThe ethnographic approach to qualitative research comes largely from the field of anthropology. The emphasis in ethnography is on studying an entire culture. Originally, the idea of a culture was tied to the notion of ethnicity and geographic location (e.g., the culture of the Trobriand Islands), but it has been broadened to include virtually any group or organization. That is, we can study the "culture" of a business or defined group (e.g., a Rotary club).Ethnography is an extremely broad area with a great variety of practitioners and methods. However, the most common ethnographic approach isparticipant observationas a part of field research. The ethnographer becomes immersed in the culture as an active participant and records extensive field notes. As in grounded theory, there is no preset limiting of what will be observed and no real ending point in an ethnographic study.PhenomenologyPhenomenology is sometimes considered a philosophical perspective as well as an approach to qualitative methodology. It has a long history in several social research disciplines including psychology, sociology and social work. Phenomenology is a school of thought that emphasizes a focus on people's subjective experiences and interpretations of the world. That is, the phenomenologist wants to understand how the world appears to others.Field ResearchField research can also be considered either a broad approach to qualitative research or a method of gathering qualitative data. the essential idea is that the researcher goes "into the field" to observe the phenomenon in its natural state or in situ. As such, it is probably most related to the method ofparticipant observation. The field researcher typically takes extensive field notes which are subsequently coded and analyzed in a variety of ways.Grounded TheoryGrounded theory is a qualitative research approach that was originally developed by Glaser and Strauss in the 1960s. The self-defined purpose of grounded theory is to develop theory about phenomena of interest. But this is not just abstract theorizing they're talking about. Instead thetheoryneeds to begroundedor rooted in observation -- hence the term.Grounded theory is a complexiterativeprocess. The research begins with the raising ofgenerative questionswhich help to guide the research but are not intended to be either static or confining. As the researcher begins to gather data,core theoretical concept(s)are identified. Tentativelinkagesare developed between the theoretical core concepts and the data. This early phase of the research tends to be very open and can take months. Later on the researcher is more engaged in verification and summary. The effort tends to evolve toward onecore categorythat is central.There are several key analytic strategies: Codingis a process for both categorizing qualitative data and for describing the implications and details of these categories. Initially one doesopen coding, considering the data in minute detail while developing some initial categories. Later, one moves to moreselective codingwhere one systematically codes with respect to a core concept. Memoingis a process for recording the thoughts and ideas of the researcher as they evolve throughout the study. You might think of memoing as extensive marginal notes and comments. Again, early in the process these memos tend to be very open while later on they tend to increasingly focus in on the core concept. Integrative diagrams and sessionsare used to pull all of the detail together, to help make sense of the data with respect to the emerging theory. The diagrams can be any form of graphic that is useful at that point in theory development. They might be concept maps or directed graphs or even simple cartoons that can act as summarizing devices. This integrative work is best done in group sessions where different members of the research team are able to interact and share ideas to increase insight.Eventually one approachesconceptually dense theoryas new observation leads to new linkages which lead to revisions in the theory and more data collection. The core concept or category is identified and fleshed out in detail.When does this process end? One answer is: never! Clearly, the process described above could continue indefinitely. Grounded theory doesn't have a clearly demarcated point for ending a study. Essentially, the project ends when the researcher decides to quit.What do you have when you're finished? Presumably you have an extremely well-considered explanation for some phenomenon of interest -- the grounded theory. This theory can be explained in words and is usually presented with much of the contextually relevant detail collected.