The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation

Science is an inherently quantitative endeavor, and general education science courses are taken by a majority of college students. As such, they are a powerful venue for advancing students’ skills and attitudes toward mathematics. This article reports on the development and validation of the Quantit...

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Main Authors: Katherine B. Follette, Donald W. McCarthy, Erin Dokter, Sanlyn Buxner, Edward Prather
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: National Numeracy Network 2015-07-01
Series:Numeracy
Subjects:
Online Access:http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol8/iss2/art2/
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spelling doaj-fed01808244641019958b89368d367a02020-11-25T00:48:40ZengNational Numeracy NetworkNumeracy1936-46601936-46602015-07-01822http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1936-4660.8.2.2The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and ValidationKatherine B. Follette0Donald W. McCarthy1Erin Dokter2Sanlyn Buxner3Edward Prather4Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford UniversityUniversity of ArizonaUniversity of ArizonaUniversity of ArizonaUniversity of ArizonaScience is an inherently quantitative endeavor, and general education science courses are taken by a majority of college students. As such, they are a powerful venue for advancing students’ skills and attitudes toward mathematics. This article reports on the development and validation of the Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, a numeracy assessment instrument designed for college-level general education science students. It has been administered to more than four thousand students over eight semesters of refinement. We show that the QuaRCS is able to distinguish varying levels of quantitative literacy and present performance statistics for both individual items and the instrument as a whole. Responses from a survey of forty-eight Astronomy and Mathematics educators show that these two groups share views regarding which quantitative skills are most important in the contexts of science literacy and educated citizenship, and the skills assessed with the QuaRCS are drawn from these rankings. The fully-developed QuaRCS assessment was administered to nearly two thousand students in nineteen general education science courses and one STEM major course in early 2015, and results reveal that the instrument is valid for both populations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol8/iss2/art2/quantitative literacyscience literacyassessment
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Katherine B. Follette
Donald W. McCarthy
Erin Dokter
Sanlyn Buxner
Edward Prather
spellingShingle Katherine B. Follette
Donald W. McCarthy
Erin Dokter
Sanlyn Buxner
Edward Prather
The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation
Numeracy
quantitative literacy
science literacy
assessment
author_facet Katherine B. Follette
Donald W. McCarthy
Erin Dokter
Sanlyn Buxner
Edward Prather
author_sort Katherine B. Follette
title The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation
title_short The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation
title_full The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation
title_fullStr The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation
title_full_unstemmed The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation
title_sort quantitative reasoning for college science (quarcs) assessment, 1: development and validation
publisher National Numeracy Network
series Numeracy
issn 1936-4660
1936-4660
publishDate 2015-07-01
description Science is an inherently quantitative endeavor, and general education science courses are taken by a majority of college students. As such, they are a powerful venue for advancing students’ skills and attitudes toward mathematics. This article reports on the development and validation of the Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, a numeracy assessment instrument designed for college-level general education science students. It has been administered to more than four thousand students over eight semesters of refinement. We show that the QuaRCS is able to distinguish varying levels of quantitative literacy and present performance statistics for both individual items and the instrument as a whole. Responses from a survey of forty-eight Astronomy and Mathematics educators show that these two groups share views regarding which quantitative skills are most important in the contexts of science literacy and educated citizenship, and the skills assessed with the QuaRCS are drawn from these rankings. The fully-developed QuaRCS assessment was administered to nearly two thousand students in nineteen general education science courses and one STEM major course in early 2015, and results reveal that the instrument is valid for both populations.
topic quantitative literacy
science literacy
assessment
url http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol8/iss2/art2/
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