Development of the Quantitative Reasoning Items on the National Survey of Student Engagement

Amber D Dumford, Louis M. Rocconi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

As society’s needs for quantitative skills become more prevalent, college graduates require quantitative skills regardless of their career choices. Therefore, it is important that institutions assess students’ engagement in quantitative activities during college. This study chronicles the process taken by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to develop items that measure students’ participation in quantitative reasoning (QR) activities. On the whole, findings across the quantitative and qualitative analyses suggest good overall properties for the developed QR items. The items show great promise to explore and evaluate the frequency with which college students participate in QR-related activities. Each year, hundreds of institutions across the United States and Canada participate in NSSE, and, with the addition of these new items on the core survey, every participating institution will have information on this topic. Our hope is that these items will spur conversations on campuses about students’ use of quantitative reasoning activities.

Original languageAmerican English
JournalDefault journal
DOIs
StatePublished - 1800
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • quantitative reasoning
  • quantitative literacy
  • student engagement
  • survey development

Disciplines

  • Higher Education

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