Mrs. Hayden conducted a nonexperimental study at her school examining the relationship between teachers' assessment practices and their students' achievement. She designed an observational instrument based on operational definitions of assessment practices that were well-documented in the literature to measure teachers' assessment practices. She used a well-validated and reliable achievement test

Question

as an indicator of student academic success. Her analysis found a significant positive relationship between teachers' use of alternative assessments and students' scores on the achievement test. She concluded that teachers should use alternative assessments on a consistent basis. On the basis of which limitation would you question her conclusions?

a) Her use of a nonexperimental design to draw causal conclusions
b) Her insider role of teacher as researcher
c) The fact that she used an achievement test to measure students' academic success
d) Her use of operational definitions rather than conceptual definitions to develop her observational instrument

Answer 1

a