2007:16 R

Area tests — a third way into higher education?

Progress report from a development project in the health care area

The test measures such knowledge, abilities and characteristics as are important for studies in the area, and its contents are therefore expected to be of guidance value to the applicants. The test is in three parts: one knowledge and skills test, one subtest of communicative competence, and one subtest to measure teamwork abilities. In the knowledge and skills test, applicants are tested for how they apply knowledge in reasoning about social issues, the natural sciences, history and religion. The tasks are designed in such a way that the person being tested has to use the Application and Analysis levels of higher order thinking skills. In the communicative competence subtest, the person being tested is presented with tasks dealing with different forms of communication between people. Since the test is computerised, it is open to various design possibilities for the tasks. In the teamwork test, there are two parts: one which has an ethical and moral emphasis and one which deals with emotions and behaviour in social situations.

Both the knowledge and skills test and the communicative competency subtest are designed so that the tested person receives a point which may then be used for ranking. The teamwork test is designed differently. The object is to identify persons who rate at the extremes of the scales used in the test, in order to exclude them from the selection. This is not permitted under current Swedish regulations, so instead we have to find another model for how to treat the results of the three subtests.

The test was first held in September 2006. The pilot testing group consisted mainly of students who had already been admitted to various programmes in the health care area. Their reactions to the contents of the test were mainly positive. The communicative competence and teamwork ability subtests were judged to be the most relevant for studies in the area.
 
The results of the pilot session have been analysed. A more detailed analysis will be made when the test has been piloted again. Such a session is planned for the spring of 2007, with a group of upper secondary school students.

There are some important results from the first pilot session which it is urgent to include in the continued development of the test. One such result is that the differences in terms of outcomes are relatively large between men and women for the knowledge and skills test, to men´s advantage. There is a corresponding difference in outcomes for the communicative competence subtest, albeit not as large. Another important result is the difference between the test group made up of native Swedish speakers and the group made up of individuals with other native languages, with better outcomes for the native Swedish speakers. The tasks in both the knowledge and skills test and the communicative competence subtest should be made a little easier in order to get a greater variety of test takers. The communicative competence subtest is assessed manually and the test designer has developed special assessment matrixes for this purpose. The pilot session has provided valuable experiences of assessment. The connections between the different parts of the test show that the subtests appear to measure different dimensions — one cognitive dimension and one dimension which has more to do with personality, personal characteristics and abilities.

The goal is that the test will be ready to use in a small-scale trial for the autumn 2008 admissions. This trial will not only test the test itself, but also the organisation and administration surrounding its application. The question of how the tests and the continued development of them should be financed remains to be solved.