Questions and thoughts 2011/03/02

Q1. Since the assumption that everyone's brain is functionally the same is false, how can we report subjects' PRO data without examining their brains?

  

 There is no contradiction between PRO and Brain-function-examining. PRO give researchers the information of subjects' opinion on the concept interested. By gathering PRO data, we can understand human's psychological construct as a unit or individually. Many factors can affect the PRO results whereas brain function is only one of them, other factors like SES also contributed to PRO. Therefore, we can say that the research of brain-function examining can give us another evident for explaining subjects' PRO data, but it is not necessary to examining subjects' brains before reporting their PRO data.   

  

Questions and thoughts 2011/02/11

Q1.How to let the CAT Taiwan version communicate with CAT developed by other countries.

1. In item level, we can at first compare the items between Taiwan version and the others in terms of item description. Secondly, we can compare the difficulty of items with similar description. By doing these two comparisons, we can understand the difference between Taiwan and other countries and which items are culturally sensitive. 
2. In domain level, by comparing the domains constructed in Taiwan and those formed in other countries, we can understand the pros and cons of our concept model. These communication also give the clues of how to enrich our own concept structure.

Q2.The value and implication of CAT evaluation.

Value

1. Standardized Testing Environment.
2. Quickly build the data bank.
3. CAT can efficiently (using less items) identify subjects' ability.

Implication

1. Clinical assessment.
2. Developing Basic Competence Test (BCT) and General Scholastic Test in Taiwan.
3. Developing Chinese GRE and Chinese TOEFL.