Hi

James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

>>> Ken Steele <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 30-May-08 12:11 PM >>>
Mike Palij wrote:
> On Thu, 29 May 2008 12:50:40 -0700, Ken Steele writes:
>> A review article of these issues has appeared in timely fashion-
>>
>> Sackett, P. R., Borneman, M. J., & Connelly, B. J. (2008). 
>> High-stakes testing in higher education and employment: Appraising 
>> the evidence for validity and fairness. American Psychologist, 63 (4), 
>> 215-227.
> 
> But I'd like to raise a larger issue and get feedback on the it.
> One of the key problems in analyzing the relationship between
> the SAT and measures of academic performance, such as GPA
> at the end of the first year, is that of range restriction:  colleges
> usually do not admit people with SAT scores belows a certain
> value so the range of values for both the SAT and GPA are both
> restricted.  However, consider the following two situations:
> 


I agree with Mike that this is an issue that is poorly 
understood.  I just created a data set for a colleague to 
simulate this effect.  The set was a simulation of the 
relationship between SAT and HS GPA.  The original set began with 
N = 100 and r = 0.8.  I started reducing the set size based on 
hypothetical college admission admission cutoffs.  By the last 
slice (OldIvy standards, SAT > 1399, N = 6), r = 0.19.


JC:

Ken, did you plug the observed values into the formula for correction to see 
how well it reproduced the .80?  My suspicion is that the adjustment would at 
least be "technically" correct in this sense, although more subjects in the 
simulation might have made agreement even more likely.

I guess I do not understand the concerns about this correction (or the mention 
of a similar concern about ANCOVA) raised by Mike.  IF all students were 
accepted to university and IF all other things (e.g., standards) remained 
constant, then this is the correlation we would observe.  So the number 
represents how well a test would predict in the absence of restriction of range 
and without other changes occurring.  Someone posted an example of the GRE and 
grad studies that exactly fit this scenario. That strikes me as an appropriate 
indicator of the impact of restriction of range on the correlations.  Certainly 
any number of other changes could impact the correlation (e.g., giving grades 
and degrees on the basis of height would presumably have a marked effect on the 
relationship between test scores and grades because the grades would no longer 
represent what they did previously).  But what does that have to do with the 
relationship between test scores and grades, as currently defined, absent a 
restricted range?

Take care
Jim


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