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A Study of the 1947 American Council on Education Psychological Examination and Its Usefulness in Predicting the Grades of Utah State Agricultural College Freshmen

prediction of future percormance is attempted in almost every field of endeavor. The accuracy varies in different lines of study, and perhaps none is as subject to variability as those attempted with human beings as subjects. When an attempt is made to ascertain in advance the performance of college students in their schoolwork, a multiplicity of complicating problems are introduced. Whereas intelligence can be fairly well isolated, it is difficult to control or even enumerated all the other factors that come into the problem of predicting grades from scores received on an intelligence examination. Among the factors that are difficult to objectively measure or control are the transference of past learning, levels of aspiration, efficiency of study habits and time spent in studyingy, attentiveness in class, as well as specific aptitudes of disabilities, varying difficulty of different academic courses, and susceptibility to or freedom fromphysiological or paychological disorders. Evn though correlations between scholastic grades and intelligence test scores will be, due to various factors of limitation, only moderately high at best, their values cannot be doubted. With high correlations, a definite relationship can be established. With lower correlations, trends can be noted. A segment analysis also may prove to be of value in establishing areas of relative stringth and weaknesses in the predictive structure. The thesis problem is one of determining certain predictive values of the American Council on Education Psychological Examination. Inasmuch as specificity is a virtue in educational measurement, the American Council test is a definite step in this direction. The aim of the test is to measure what the authors of hte test consider to be schoolastic aptitude. The purpose of this study is to determine the accuracy of this scholastic aptitude test in predicting grade-point averages of Utah State Agricultural College freshmen students in their first quarter in college.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UTAHS/oai:digitalcommons.usu.edu:etd-2811
Date01 May 1949
CreatorsBateson, Russell B.
PublisherDigitalCommons@USU
Source SetsUtah State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceAll Graduate Theses and Dissertations

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