An Explanation of Statistical Tools from DocumentingExcellence.com A consulting practice focusing on working with colleges', organizations', and individuals' utilization of quantitative and qualitative assessment tools to analyze and document their quality outcomes through providing staff development, research design and analysis, and psychometric evaluations.

Statistical Tools TOC Analysis Procedures Conceptual Issues Competency Learning Domains Item Construction Item Assessment Scale Construction Measurment Issues Evaluating - Single variable Descriptive statistics Validity, Reliabiltiy, Cause & Effect Reporting Modeling Correlation Regression & Correlation Statistical Control Unemployment & Crime Model Reduction Outcomes Assessment FAQ Consulting Services

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There are many varied reasons why someone would use a tool to gather information.  Although tools may use  a combination of approaches, they tend to have one or more of the following purposes.

	Individual Description - To describe characteristics of individuals
	Aggregated Description - To summarize characteristics of groups or classifications of individuals (cases).
	Discrimination - To draw distinctions between or among groups or classifications of cases.
	Competency - To measure levels of knowledge, skill, ability as compared to others or some benchmark.  This type of testing considers the structure of learning domains and the structure of items based on test theory. Learning Domains Item construction and analysis - test theory Item assessment and evaluation
	Psychological and social scale construction - To measure traits, value patterns, beliefs that are "fuzzier" and that require indirect measurement using indicators.

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Copyright © 2011 by Peter T. Klassen, Ph.D. Principal, www.DocumentingExcellence.com
20 February, 2011