Exploring the relationship between prospective community college students' scores on the computerized placement tests and on the pre-TASP test

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between the scores prospective community college students made on two different placement instruments, specifically the Computerized Placement Tests from The College Board and the Pre-TASP Test from National Evaluation System, Inc. This study was conducted at St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas, in August 1994. The 446 subjects used in this study came from the population of students seeking entry to the college for the Fall 1994 semester. The study focused on four research questions: 1. What is the relationship between students' scores on the reading section of the Pre-TASP and their scores on the Reading Comprehension Test of the Computerized Placement Test? 2. What is the relationship between students' scores on the writing section of the Pre-TASP and their scores on the Sentence Skills Test of the Computerized Placement Test? 3. What is the relationship between students' scores on the mathematics section of the PreTASP and their 4. What is the relationship between students' scores on the mathematics section of the PreTASP and their scores on the College Level Mathematics Test of the Computerized Placement Test? Data were analyzed using the General Linear Model (GLM) techniques. In answering the research questions posed in this study, the data show that there are positive linear relationships between the students' scores on the CPTs Reading Comprehension Test, Sentence Skills Test, the Arithmetic Test, and the Elementary Algebra Test and the corresponding sections of the Pre-TASP Test. However, the correlations between the CPTs and the corresponding sections of the PTT are not strong enough for one test to predict outcome on the other.