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Further Information
Curriculum Vitae
- Year of Birth: 1987
- Degree:
Diploma in Psychology (2013) - LMU Munich
Research Topics
- Trends in and quality of scientific reasoning skills assessments
- Assessment and domain-generality/specificity of scientific reasoning skills in university students
Current Research Project
- Problem:
So far there is no overview of tests that measure scientific reasoning skills. Thus, not enough is known about the quality and characteristics of the tests and there is no consensus how to measure scientific reasoning. In addition, resources are wasted on creating new tests because researchers were not aware of existing tests.
- Research Questions:
Which tests of scientific reasoning skills do exist? What is their theoretical background? What scientific reasoning skills are covered? What are the assumptions about domain generality / specificity? What are the psychometric properties of the tests?
- Results:
A search of the literature led to the inclusion of 38 assessments into the review. There were two big waves of assessment development, 1973 – 1989 and 2002 – today. There is not one dominant theoretical approach to construct assessments but different preferences in different times. The same can be said about assumptions about domain generality. Additionally, domain generality assumptions are usually not checked. Regarding psychometric properties little is known about differences to other cognitive abilities.
- Follow-up study:
In a second study one scientific reasoning test is given to students from three different domains (physics, biology and medicine). The idea of differential item functioning will be used to find out whether the items of the test measure the same in the three different domains. We especially focus on the question if a certain level of context knowledge dependency of an item leads to measurement invariance.
Publications
- Allgaier, A., Krick, K., Opitz, A., Saravo, B., Romanos, M., & Schulte-Körne, G. (2014). Improving early detection of childhood depression in mental health care: The Children׳s Depression Screener (ChilD-S). Psychiatry Research, 217(3), 248-252
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Opitz, A., Heene, M., & Fischer, F. (2014). Review of tests of scientific reasoning skills. Round-table presentation at the 18. Conference of the junior researchers of EARLI “Learning and Instruction Inside Out”, June 30th – July 4th 2014, University of Cyprus. Nicosia, Cyprus.
- Opitz, A., Heene, M., & Fischer, F. (2014). Review of tests of scientific reasoning skills. Poster presentation at the 49. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie „Die Vielfalt der Psychologie”, September 21st – 25th 2014, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Bochum, Germany.
- Opitz, A., Heene, M., & Fischer, F. (2015). If scientific reasoning is what the tests test, then what is scientific reasoning? A review. Poster presentation at the 96. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association “Toward Justice: Culture, Language, and Heritage in Education Research and Praxis”, April 16th – 20th 2015. Chicago, USA.