Psychologv
in
the
Schools
Volume
29,
January
1992
TRIAL BY FIRE: ONE PERSPECTIVE FOR GUESSING
JONATHAN
R.
BROWN
State University
of
New
York
Guessing correct answers to test items is a statistical concept that has direct impact
when interpreting test
scores.
Many published tests, however, do not account for guess-
ing. This is an important issue in view of recent federal legislation in the United States
and global attention mandating the provision
of
identification of at-risk children
for
educational services. Children may score within a normal range by chance alone,
resulting in test scores that are not sensitive. The purpose of this paper, therefore,
is: (a) to describe one process, random guessing,
for
estimating a “true blind guess-
ing score” (range
of
scores) that, if known, would result in missing fewer at-risk
children; and
(b)
to
sensitize test administrators to tests that do not address
or
may
have suspicious corrections for guessing answers on tests.
We have all taken tests and have all become discerning to the outcome of test results.
Probably no better example in American history
of
just how important test outcome
may be is provided by the brutality and hysteria of the Salem witch scare about
300
years ago. It began in the home
of
Reverend Samuel Paris, minister of the local Puritan
church. During a long and lonely winter, several young girls listened to supernatural
stories by a black servant from Barbados named Tituba. Later that winter a number
of the girls became ill and were diagnosed by the local physician, Dr. Griggs, as being
bewitched. The girls named Tituba, Sara Good (“the town hag”), and Sarah Osbourne
(a lady who had lived with a man out
of
wedlock before marrying him) as the cause.
Witchcraft was
a
crime of conscience, a declaration of enmity toward God. Witches
were condemned by tribunals for sin, not for crime (Franklyn,
1971;
Max,
1970).
The
administration
of
a test to detect
a
witch began by an accusation from a “respectable”
member of the community. Those who were women, Black, poor, single, and quar-
relsome were most often found to be witches. People who were associated with a fire
going out upon entering a room, owned a black dog, loved animals, had bodily scars,
sank to the bottom
of
a pond (fully clothed) rather than floating, or lived in a
neighborhood when a cow stopped giving milk were,
if
accused, most often found to
be witches. By
1330,600
women were reported to have been burned to death in Europe
for failing the test. Whereas tests
for
witches were discriminately administered
to
associate
unfortunate chance occurrences in the community with the behaviors of select people,
today we administer and interpret tests more carefully, using highly scientific principles
to identify populations for educational intervention. Or do we?
According to the joint committee of the American Educational Research Associa-
tion (AERA), the American Psychology Association (APA), and the National Council
on
Measurement in Education (NCME), a test is
a
set of tasks or questions intended
to elicit specific types of behaviors to yield scores with desirable psychometric proper-
ties (AERA, APA,
&
NCME,
1985).
It is estimated that children attending America’s
public schools take more than
250
million standardized tests each year (Salvia
&
Ysseldyke,
1988).
Requests
for
reprints should be sent to Jonathan
R.
Brown, Center for Educational Studies, State University
of New York, Fredonia,
NY
14063.
71
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