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RESEARCH

The Psychometrics section focuses on the data we gathered in the development of the DAI. But the Projects section will contain summaries of research generated by practitioners, professors, and graduate students.

The history and development of the inventory is outlined in Part V of the Advisor's Guide. We put it last because it makes pretty boring reading for most of us practitioners. However, it is important from a research perspective. This part deals with reliability, different types of validity, statistical procedures like factor analysis and other methodologies. There are also lots of tables and figures for those who need it and we hope they inspire a little confidence in the instrument. Here's the skinny for those of you more concerned about the "whites of their eyes" than numbers. We generated some respectable, though modest, numbers. But the dimensions are certainly not "pure" factors--

there is overlap. Neither would a casual observer of human behavior expect them to be. The real test for the practitioner probably is this: What happens with students when they complete the inventory and are shown dynamic resources for doing something practical with their scores? The goal is teaching accurate self-assessment skills. Can the DAI do that? Questions about psychometrics are best directed to Dr. Jerry Thayer.

Some assessment efforts are pilot projects, with only a few students, that fizzle. Others progress in stages resulting in four-year profiles of new freshmen. And there are the super committed who stay with it long enough to get outcome measures of freshmen-to-senior development. However, most assessment efforts seek a profile of specific groups like residence halls, high-risk students, commuter students etc. to identify programming priorities. The op scan answer sheet and scoring service make data from these profiles easy to deal with.

To encourage such projects, DAI, Inc. is currently making a special offer to graduate students conducting research leading to a degree--50% discount on materials and scoring services after purchasing the Specimen Set at full price ($20). An application is required describing the research proposal and other institutional information.

Data Research Option*. This is a valuable feature for data oriented administrators, professors, or graduate students. It allows you to export the DAI raw data behind the aggregate report and make it available for importing into statistical programs like SPSS. Doing so makes it easy to analyze DAI information with data collected from other sources for important decision-making. For example, DAI data can then be compared with assessments focusing on program effectiveness, learning and development patterns, and outcome measures related to institutional mission, retention, etc. In addition, the DAI raw data can also be exported for use in spreadsheet programs like MS Excel so that attractive presentations can be made using pie charts, bar graphs, etc.

* This feature is technically called the CSV option (Comma Separated Values); or, in Excel it is referred to as a Comma Delimited Text File).

In the future, we hope to cite research projects, M.A. theses, dissertations etc. in this section as they are forwarded to us from the authors. They are categorized as Completed Projects and Major Ongoing Projects.

COMPLETED PROJECTS

MAJOR ONGOING PROJECTS