With approximately 30 million students the Chinese higher education system is the largest in the world. In every publicly funded institution there is a communist party secretary, however, little is known about these party secretaries. The purpose of the study was to understand who these people were. We collected data from 1,751 party secretaries…

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) and Pathfinder techniques for assessing changes in the structural representation of a knowledge domain were studied with relatedness ratings collected from 72 Spanish college students. Comparison of student and expert similarity measures indicate that MDS and graph theoretic approaches are valid techniques. (SLD)

Ranking and rating methods of making direct judgments of pairwise similarity are compared. Three dimensional configurations of seven objects are derived under both judgment methods across two equivalent groups of 59 university students. Using Cliff's orthogonal rotation method of multidimensional matching, comparisons are made between methods…

The usefulness of examining the structural validity of scores on multidimensional measures using nested hierarchical model comparisons was evaluated in 2 studies using the Social Problem Solving Inventory (SPSI) with samples of 464 and 216 undergraduates. Results support the conceptual model of the SPSI. (SLD)

This paper addresses the problem of whether two-dimensional solutions with different apparent meanings and different implied interpretations of the number-correct scale could be produced from the same test data set by simply shifting the orientation of the two-dimensional projection plane. An artificial data set of 3,000 response vectors and a…

The cognitive structure of 13 concepts in pulmonary physiology was explored among 112 first-year medical students and among 32 faculty members in three different expertise groups in a knowledge representation study. Purposes were to assess the degree of agreement among faculty members, map students' concept structures, and compare the similarity…

A study was conducted to determine the dimensions underlying the items on a course-instructor survey instrument currently in use to measure graduate student ratings of instruction (attached). Both factor analysis and multidimensional scaling methods were used to analyze the response data, so that the results of each could be evluated, and the two…

Ten poems were read and evaluated for perceived similarity by freshmen and senior college students majoring in engineering and literature, to determine whether their education affected the students' ability to read and subjectively perceive poetry. Results showed that literary instruction did not change the students' ability to perceive poetry.…

In 1976, the Association of American Medical Colleges developed a map-like model to describe the global picture of the U.S. medical school similarities with respect to two loosely defined concepts: an institutional emphasis on research and an emphasis on clinical and graduate medical training. This study is an attempt to replicate the results of…

Reports results of a comparison of correlational and multidimensional scaling techniques as tools for analyzing the perceptions of three groups of mathematics teachers (at high school, vocational school, and university levels) of the relative importance of curricular objectives. Discusses the relationship of the two analyses and the implications…

Two sets of real sorting data from 50 college students are used to compare results of multidimensional scaling of raw co-occurrence frequencies or dissimilarity measures (D) and profile distances (delta) to determine which yields a better representation of the underlying structure of 2 sets of stimuli. Slight differences are discussed. (SLD)

Equatings were performed on both simulated and real data sets using common-examinee design and two abilities for each examinee. Results indicate that effective equating, as measured by comparability of true scores, is possible with the techniques used in this study. However, the stability of the ability estimates proved unsatisfactory. (TJH)

A model of graph comprehension is proposed including perceptual and memory processes. Multidimensional scaling (MDS), cluster analysis, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to determine how college students with different mathematical experience read different types of bar graphs. Data were collected at the University of Oklahoma (Norman)…

Geometric approaches to representing interrelations among tests and items are compared with an additive tree model (ATM), using 2,644 examinees and 2 other data sets. The ATM's close fit to the data and its coherence of presentation indicate that it is the best means of representing tests and items. (TJH)

Describes two studies that compared university students' judgments about the readability and studyability of two sets of computer screens: a set of model displays and a set of real screens copied from computer-assisted instruction programs. Relationships among viewers' preferences and field dependence/independence, conceptual style, and gender…