ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
*****************************************************************************

Hi Beryl,

2 thoughts on your scale approach. 1) the middle choice you offer, ³neither
helped nor confused me,² is not the ³neutral² between did not help me and
helped me. You are introducing confused me, which is not necessarily the
opposite of helped me‹as you point out in your follow-up question. 2) as you
say, you won¹t be able to tell if people who ³check did not help² were
confused or already knew all about the topic. You can ask respondents to
indicate how much knowledge they have on the topic, on another sliding
scale. Then sort the ³help/not help² responses by background knowledge, or
run a correlation test on the responses.

Hope this helps.
-- 
Ellen Giusti
Museum Visitor Studies Consultant
Phone: 212 876-1425
Fax: 212 427-7142





On 11/17/06 9:00 PM, "ISEN-ASTC-L automatic digest system"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Beryl Rosenthal <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:32:27 -0500
> Subject: Evaluation tool
> 
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
> 
> Hi all,
> A question for those of you in evaluation:  We are interested in
> evaluating the role of "environmental" components in a facilitated
> hands-on experience.  Our challenge is the scale.  Here's where we
> are now:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Did not help me at all
> Did not help me
> Neither helped nor confused me
> Helped me
> Helped me a lot
> videos
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> posters
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Legos
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> computers
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> station movement  (within the space)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   We're not sure if this scale will give us what we are after.  We
> suspect we will be unable to differentiate between people with
> previous knowledge AND those with zero baseline knowledge - they may
> both check "Did not help me at all". If we split that comment into
> "did not help because I already knew it" and "did not help, I'm still
> confused", are we getting into trouble?
> 
> Any comments would be helpful.
> 
> Thanks,
> Beryl
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Beryl Rosenthal
> [log in to unmask]
> Dir. of Exhibition & Public Programs
> MIT Museum
> 265 Massachusetts Ave.
> Cambridge, MA 02139
> (617)452-2111 (t)
> (617)253-8994 (f)
> 



***********************************************************************
More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
Association of Science-Technology Centers may be found at http://www.astc.org.
To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
message  SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
[log in to unmask]