The Power Of Tests

Author : Elana Shohamy
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317875486
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Power of Tests written by Elana Shohamy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language in Social Life is a major series which highlights the importance of language to an understanding of issues of social and professional concern. It will be of practical relevance to all those wanting to understand how the ways we communicate both influence and are influenced by the structures and forces of contemporary social institutions. In all modern societies individuals are subject to tests, whether to enter educational programs, to pass from one level to the next or to grant certificates to practice. Yet, tests are powerful tools which are often introduced in undemocratic and unethical ways as disciplinary tools for carrying out various policy agendas. Tests can be detrimental to people's lives as they are capable of affecting and defining the knowledge and behaviour of those who are being tested. The Power of Tests applies a critical perspective of language tests by examining their uses and consequences in education and society and by viewing tests not as isolated events but rather as embedded in social, educational and political contexts. The book is divided into four parts: the first part establishes the power of tests through echoing the voices of test takers, describing the features of the power of tests, and the temptations that tests offer to bureaucrats who use them for power and control. The second part reports on studies that provide empirical evidence about intentions and effects of a number of large scale language tests. The third part interprets the results by examining their consequences on education and society, arriving at a model of tests' use. The final section of the book offers strategies for controlling and minimising the misuses of tests by introducing the notion of Critical Language Testing which calls for the examination of the consequences and misuses of tests, monitoring of power and pointing to their unethical uses. It also provides a comprehensive discussion of the responsibilities of language testers, including a new Code of Ethics, as well as strategies for guarding and protecting the rights of test takers.

Author : Elana (Professor Of Language Education Shohamy
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000161633
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Power of Tests written by Elana (Professor Of Language Education Shohamy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language in Social Life is a major series which highlights the importance of language to an understanding of issues of social and professional concern. It will be of practical relevance to all those wanting to understand how the ways we communicate both influence and are influenced by the structures and forces of contemporary social institutions. In all modern societies individuals are subject to tests, whether to enter educational programs, to pass from one level to the next or to grant certificates to practice. Yet, tests are powerful tools which are often introduced in undemocratic and unethical ways as disciplinary tools for carrying out various policy agendas. Tests can be detrimental to people's lives as they are capable of affecting and defining the knowledge and behaviour of those who are being tested. The Power of Tests applies a critical perspective of language tests by examining their uses and consequences in education and society and by viewing tests not as isolated events but rather as embedded in social, educational and political contexts. The book is divided into four parts: the first part establishes the power of tests through echoing the voices of test takers, describing the features of the power of tests, and the temptations that tests offer to bureaucrats who use them for power and control. The second part reports on studies that provide empirical evidence about intentions and effects of a number of large scale language tests. The third part interprets the results by examining their consequences on education and society, arriving at a model of tests' use. The final section of the book offers strategies for controlling and minimising the misuses of tests by introducing the notion of Critical Language Testing which calls for the examination of the consequences and misuses of tests, monitoring of power and pointing to their unethical uses. It also provides a comprehensive discussion of the responsibilities of language testers, including a new Code of Ethics, as well as strategies for guarding and protecting the rights of test takers.

Author : Elana (Professor Of Language Education Shohamy
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 100012293X
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Power of Tests written by Elana (Professor Of Language Education Shohamy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language in Social Life is a major series which highlights the importance of language to an understanding of issues of social and professional concern. It will be of practical relevance to all those wanting to understand how the ways we communicate both influence and are influenced by the structures and forces of contemporary social institutions. In all modern societies individuals are subject to tests, whether to enter educational programs, to pass from one level to the next or to grant certificates to practice. Yet, tests are powerful tools which are often introduced in undemocratic and unethical ways as disciplinary tools for carrying out various policy agendas. Tests can be detrimental to people's lives as they are capable of affecting and defining the knowledge and behaviour of those who are being tested. The Power of Tests applies a critical perspective of language tests by examining their uses and consequences in education and society and by viewing tests not as isolated events but rather as embedded in social, educational and political contexts. The book is divided into four parts: the first part establishes the power of tests through echoing the voices of test takers, describing the features of the power of tests, and the temptations that tests offer to bureaucrats who use them for power and control. The second part reports on studies that provide empirical evidence about intentions and effects of a number of large scale language tests. The third part interprets the results by examining their consequences on education and society, arriving at a model of tests' use. The final section of the book offers strategies for controlling and minimising the misuses of tests by introducing the notion of Critical Language Testing which calls for the examination of the consequences and misuses of tests, monitoring of power and pointing to their unethical uses. It also provides a comprehensive discussion of the responsibilities of language testers, including a new Code of Ethics, as well as strategies for guarding and protecting the rights of test takers.

Author : Kevin R. Murphy
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135625328
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Statistical Power Analysis written by Kevin R. Murphy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a simple and general method for conducting statistical power analysis based on the widely used F statistic. The book illustrates how these analyses work and how they can be applied to problems of studying design, to evaluate others' research, and to choose the appropriate criterion for defining "statistically significant" outcomes. Statistical Power Analysis examines the four major applications of power analysis, concentrating on how to determine: *the sample size needed to achieve desired levels of power; *the level of power that is needed in a study; *the size of effect that can be reliably detected by a study; and *sensible criteria for statistical significance. Highlights of the second edition include: a CD with an easy-to-use statistical power analysis program; a new chapter on power analysis in multi-factor ANOVA, including repeated-measures designs; and a new One-Stop PV Table to serve as a quick reference guide. The book discusses the application of power analysis to both traditional null hypothesis tests and to minimum-effect testing. It demonstrates how the same basic model applies to both types of testing and explains how some relatively simple procedures allow researchers to ask a series of important questions about their research. Drawing from the behavioral and social sciences, the authors present the material in a nontechnical way so that readers with little expertise in statistical analysis can quickly obtain the values needed to carry out the power analysis. Ideal for students and researchers of statistical and research methodology in the social, behavioral, and health sciences who want to know how to apply methods of power analysis to their research.

Author : Jacob Cohen
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134742770
Total Pages : 625 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences written by Jacob Cohen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Statistical Power Analysis is a nontechnical guide to power analysis in research planning that provides users of applied statistics with the tools they need for more effective analysis. The Second Edition includes: * a chapter covering power analysis in set correlation and multivariate methods; * a chapter considering effect size, psychometric reliability, and the efficacy of "qualifying" dependent variables and; * expanded power and sample size tables for multiple regression/correlation.

Author : Jim Cummins
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 0387463011
Total Pages : 1215 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book International Handbook of English Language Teaching written by Jim Cummins and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-12-31 with total page 1215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two volume handbook provides a comprehensive examination of policy, practice, research and theory related to English Language Teaching in international contexts. More than 70 chapters highlight the research foundation for best practices, frameworks for policy decisions, and areas of consensus and controversy in second language acquisition and pedagogy. The Handbook provides a unique resource for policy makers, educational administrators, and researchers concerned with meeting the increasing demand for effective English language teaching. It offers a strongly socio-cultural view of language learning and teaching. It is comprehensive and global in perspective with a range of fresh new voices in English language teaching research.

Author : Daniel Navarro
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 1326189727
Total Pages : 617 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Learning Statistics with R written by Daniel Navarro and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013-01-13 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Learning Statistics with R" covers the contents of an introductory statistics class, as typically taught to undergraduate psychology students, focusing on the use of the R statistical software and adopting a light, conversational style throughout. The book discusses how to get started in R, and gives an introduction to data manipulation and writing scripts. From a statistical perspective, the book discusses descriptive statistics and graphing first, followed by chapters on probability theory, sampling and estimation, and null hypothesis testing. After introducing the theory, the book covers the analysis of contingency tables, t-tests, ANOVAs and regression. Bayesian statistics are covered at the end of the book. For more information (and the opportunity to check the book out before you buy!) visit http://ua.edu.au/ccs/teaching/lsr or http://learningstatisticswithr.com

Author : Rotem Dror
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031021746
Total Pages : 98 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Statistical Significance Testing for Natural Language Processing written by Rotem Dror and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Data-driven experimental analysis has become the main evaluation tool of Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms. In fact, in the last decade, it has become rare to see an NLP paper, particularly one that proposes a new algorithm, that does not include extensive experimental analysis, and the number of involved tasks, datasets, domains, and languages is constantly growing. This emphasis on empirical results highlights the role of statistical significance testing in NLP research: If we, as a community, rely on empirical evaluation to validate our hypotheses and reveal the correct language processing mechanisms, we better be sure that our results are not coincidental. The goal of this book is to discuss the main aspects of statistical significance testing in NLP. Our guiding assumption throughout the book is that the basic question NLP researchers and engineers deal with is whether or not one algorithm can be considered better than another one. This question drives the field forward as it allows the constant progress of developing better technology for language processing challenges. In practice, researchers and engineers would like to draw the right conclusion from a limited set of experiments, and this conclusion should hold for other experiments with datasets they do not have at their disposal or that they cannot perform due to limited time and resources. The book hence discusses the opportunities and challenges in using statistical significance testing in NLP, from the point of view of experimental comparison between two algorithms. We cover topics such as choosing an appropriate significance test for the major NLP tasks, dealing with the unique aspects of significance testing for non-convex deep neural networks, accounting for a large number of comparisons between two NLP algorithms in a statistically valid manner (multiple hypothesis testing), and, finally, the unique challenges yielded by the nature of the data and practices of the field.

Author : John Arundel
Publisher : John Arundel
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Power of Go: Tests written by John Arundel and published by John Arundel. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to program with confidence? How do you build self-testing software? What even is a test, anyway? Bestselling Go writer and teacher John Arundel tackles these questions, and many more, in his follow-up to the highly successful The Power of Go: Tools. Welcome to the thrilling world of fuzzy mutants and spies, guerilla testing, mocks and crocks, design smells, mirage tests, deep abstractions, exploding pointers, sentinels and six-year-old astronauts, coverage ratchets and golden files, singletons and walking skeletons, canaries and smelly suites, flaky tests and concurrent callbacks, fakes, CRUD methods, infinite defects, brittle tests, wibbly-wobby timey-wimey stuff, adapters and ambassadors, tests that fail only at midnight, and gremlins that steal from the player during the hours of darkness. “If you get fired as a result of applying the advice in this book, then that’s probably for the best, all things considered. But if it happens, I’ll make it my personal mission to get you a job with a better company: one where people are rewarded, not punished, for producing software that actually works.” Go’s built-in support for testing puts tests front and centre of any software project, from command-line tools to sophisticated backend servers and APIs. This accessible, amusing book will introduce you to all Go’s testing facilities, show you how to use them to write tests for the trickiest things, and distils the collected wisdom of the Go community on best practices for testing Go programs. Crammed with hundreds of code examples, the book uses real tests and real problems to show you exactly what to do, step by step. You’ll learn how to use tests to design programs that solve user problems, how to build reliable codebases on solid foundations, and how tests can help you tackle horrible, bug-riddled legacy codebases and make them a nicer place to live. From choosing informative, behaviour-focused names for your tests to clever, powerful techniques for managing test dependencies like databases and concurrent servers, The Power of Go: Tests has everything you need to master the art of testing in Go.

Author : Lisa L. Harlow
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131724284X
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book What If There Were No Significance Tests? written by Lisa L. Harlow and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-02 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic edition of What If There Were No Significance Tests? highlights current statistical inference practices. Four areas are featured as essential for making inferences: sound judgment, meaningful research questions, relevant design, and assessing fit in multiple ways. Other options (data visualization, replication or meta-analysis), other features (mediation, moderation, multiple levels or classes), and other approaches (Bayesian analysis, simulation, data mining, qualitative inquiry) are also suggested. The Classic Edition’s new Introduction demonstrates the ongoing relevance of the topic and the charge to move away from an exclusive focus on NHST, along with new methods to help make significance testing more accessible to a wider body of researchers to improve our ability to make more accurate statistical inferences. Part 1 presents an overview of significance testing issues. The next part discusses the debate in which significance testing should be rejected or retained. The third part outlines various methods that may supplement significance testing procedures. Part 4 discusses Bayesian approaches and methods and the use of confidence intervals versus significance tests. The book concludes with philosophy of science perspectives. Rather than providing definitive prescriptions, the chapters are largely suggestive of general issues, concerns, and application guidelines. The editors allow readers to choose the best way to conduct hypothesis testing in their respective fields. For anyone doing research in the social sciences, this book is bound to become "must" reading. Ideal for use as a supplement for graduate courses in statistics or quantitative analysis taught in psychology, education, business, nursing, medicine, and the social sciences, the book also benefits independent researchers in the behavioral and social sciences and those who teach statistics.