Wordsum

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Wordsum is a 10-item vocabulary test that has been included as an item on the General Social Survey (GSS) in most survey years since 1974. [1] Each of the test's items ranges in difficulty from very easy to very difficult. It is widely used in research in the social and behavioral sciences. [2] It is taken by about 1,000 people in each year in which it is included as part of the GSS. [3] Its administration involves showing respondents a card containing 10 words, and then asking them to find the synonym for each of them out of a set of five choices.[ citation needed ] Although most researchers have implicitly assumed that each item on the test deserves equal weight, its validity can be improved by considering the variance for each word separately. [4]

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References

  1. Siegel, Jacob S. (2017-10-25). Demographic and Socioeconomic Basis of Ethnolinguistics. Springer. p. 227. ISBN   9783319617787.
  2. Cor, M. Ken; Haertel, Edward; Krosnick, Jon A.; Malhotra, Neil (2012). "Improving ability measurement in surveys by following the principles of IRT: The Wordsum vocabulary test in the General Social Survey". Social Science Research. 41 (5): 1003–1016. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.05.007. PMID   23017913.
  3. Huang, Min-Hsiung; Hauser, Robert (1998). "Trends in Black-White test-score differentials: II. The WORDSUM vocabulary test." . The rising curve: Long-term gains in IQ and related measures. pp.  303–332. doi:10.1037/10270-011. ISBN   1-55798-503-0.
  4. "The Psychometric Properties of the GSS Wordsum Vocabulary Test". gss.norc.org. 2007. Retrieved 2018-03-11.