Technical Report - International Military Testing Association

-IThe - Mearurc?ront and Prediction of Motivation
By way of introduction to the rtudiar on the marure&zmt of moth-
. ’ vatfon tvo 8tati8tical concepc~ nerd to be defined co fit our context:
residual gain and actual to predicted ratio.
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A. Reridual Cain. “Residual gain@’ ~88 dercribtd b y DUBOIS .in hir
text on ‘Hultiv8riate ~relatjonal Analysir” (1957) a~ tht rcrldual
vhich rtmtin, vharc the variance, vhich an lnLtia1 8core ha8 in CQmnOn
vi th the flntl score, lr partialed out of tha find 8cort. Actually,
Tborndibt, Brtgmrn, Tilton, and modyard in a text on “Adult Laarning”
(1928) are credited for the firrt research employing reridual gain.
Hirtorically, “re8ldual gaie~” va8 developed and used in a context of
gain in learning. The clarric que8tion in laarning rertrrch has been:
What are the correlate8 of learning?” This a88ume8 of cour88, that
learning LJ not to be confurtd vith intelligence, � chievtmmt and other
factors for which ttrtr have been devfrtd. mutver, several traditional
probltma have been arrociatad vith finding the correlate8 of learning:
(a) Aov can g8in be txpretmd to avoid metric difference8 betvren initial
and final mearur4mtntr? (b) How can vt hold cormtent the known differtnct8
among Individual8 in learning (or gain in achievtmsnt) in the fiM1
msnrurement? a,& (c) Art the usual lw corrtlationr among gain eteaJUrbJ
due to the multiplex nature oE gain or perhapr due to inadequate maJureJ
of gain? “Reridual gain ,” derived by part correlatton techniquer, appearo
to provide Jn Jdequate solution to each of there problem. hi8 may not
sppesr relevant to the mstter in qwrtion here--nmely, tha mesourmmt
of motivation in a training tnvironment. Houwar, the evoiution of
“reefdual gain” AJ an index of learning ability va8 df*.tctsd eventually
toward the w88ureumnt of cwtivation by a minor change in the baric
dtrign utilized in the correlation81 rtudltr on learning. Thorofore,
in order to trace the role of 8’remidual gain” in rsrearch on uativation,
it fr necerrary to digrarr a little further on the nature of
tBresidurl gain” itself.
The baric paradigm utillittd in rtuditr on ~‘rteidual gain” fnvolv~~
(1) pre-tertlng of achievement of rkill in a particular area. (2) Subrequent
to thir, a given block of related inrtruction 10 introduced
axparlrmnt8lAy, or ir provided by a technical rchool (~8 a logical rtquence
to the pre-test itself, to the circuiwtancer dictate. (3) Lastly, a
fl.nnl grade ir obtained for thir given block of instruction. The problam
prerented here is to � ����� the degree of learning that took place
behmen the pre-test and post-tart. lhir can ba done reveral different
way8 (f.e., crude gain, X g,rin, etc.); however, “re8ldual gain” appurr
to be a more oatlafactory rtatirtic of gain Ln 1earnLng.
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