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Knowledge has many dimensions Effects of being misinformed Index of retention Other benefits of SACAT Journal/news articles Main Pages Home Benefits of SACAT Scoring services About HPE Contact us |
| KNOWLEDGE HAS MANY DIMENSIONS |
Common multiple choice tests of achievement or knowledge, in which it is determined simply whether a person can answer questions correctly, have several unacceptable flaws.
The most important flaw is that they allow a person's misinformation, i.e., sure-but-wrong answers, to remain concealed and, thus, uncorrected. A wrong answer is interpreted simply to mean that the person is uninformed and has not yet learned the correct knowledge. However, the situation may be worse than this. The person may be misinformed and strongly believe that the wrong answer which he or she selected is correct. Such misinformation not only leads to poor, sometimes even dangerous, decisions and errors in performance but also is counter productive as a foundation for more advanced learning.
Secondly, the common multiple choice test cannot distinguish between a test taker who answers correctly but is very unsure of it and has made a lucky guess - and a person who is correct and is extremely sure of its correctness. Thus we are encouraged to guess at the answer hoping that we may select the correct answer and undeservedly get credit for knowing the answer. There are even special books to instruct us how to get correct answers without really knowing the material - which, of course, defeats the purpose of the test.
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How would you feel if you suddenly discovered that a serious accident was caused by too-slow action of a person who was unsure that it was the correct action to take? SACAT - the new testing method, detects a person's uncertain knowledge! Being correct is not enough! |
The idea that a person's certainty is an essential part of a person's knowledge is not new. Over 2,000 years ago Aristotle said,
"The proud man ... claims what is in accordance with his merits, while others go to excess or fall short. He who thinks himself worthy of great things, being unworthy of them, is vain."For several reasons (such as detecting misinformation, dealing with guessing, reducing gender bias, and motivating students), it is useful to define the concept of personal knowledge as a (justified) belief which is correct and about which the person is certain of its correctness.
SACAT employs this redefinition of personal knowledge (as a correct and certain belief) by allowing test takers to indicate "how sure" they are that each answer they select is correct. A Percentage Self Assessment (%SA) score is calculated which provides an overall index of the accuracy with which the test takers assess the correctness of their own answers.
The number of points gained (if the answer is correct) or lost (if incorrect) depends on "how sure" the person is. The relationship between the number of points gained or lost and the person's certainty is designed with the aim that the test taker will obtain the highest score only by estimating the certainty as accurately and truthfully as possible. Being "humble", i.e., underassessing one's certainty will lead, when the answer is correct, to not gaining as many points as one deserves. And being "vain", i.e., over-estimating one's certainty will lead, when the answer is wrong, to losing more points than they would had they answered truthfully. The perfect SACAT scores are 100% Correct, 100% SA Score, 100% Sure-and-Correct ----and 0% for the other scores.