Response and scoring models for the 'Views on Science-Technology-Society' instrument

Abstract

The understanding of science, technology, and their mutual relationships in and with society is a growing goal in educational systems. Researchers and educators are concerned about the assessment of STS topics. The 'Views on Science-Technology-Society' instrument (VOSTS) is an empirically developed multiple-choice item pool (114) that offers a wide coverage of STS topics and a methodology to assess them. However, the unique response model usually applied to answer VOSTS items does not allow the use of inferential statistics and does not take advantage of the large volume of available information. This paper addresses both issues, suggesting new response and scoring models to improve VOSTS implementation. First, the paper analyses the scaling properties of some scoring procedures within the unique response model and suggests ways to produce 'best fidelity' measurements. Second, the paper presents a multiple response model that could take advantage of all the information contained in each item, and puts forward a rating scale procedure to establish the model. This paper provides the rationale to justify the proposals: further empirical work is needed to test the application of the model.