A Method and R Package for Calculating the Conditional Distribution of Ability for Identified Students

• In Event: 75.042 - MTCC Roundtable Session 34
  In Roundtable Session: 75.042-9 - Gifted Education: Practices and Policies

Abstract

This paper develops methods for calculating the conditional probabilities of identification in one- and two-stage gifted identification systems and, in the full-length version of the manuscript, derives the conditional distribution functions of true and observed ability scores of identified students, including the pdf, the cdf, and quantile function, and functions for simulating random values. An accompanying R package and Shiny web application allows these computations to be easily carried out. These methods allow researchers to quantify the efficacy of identification systems for specific students. We included all of the figures from the full-length version of the manuscript in this proposal as evidence that we have elaborated these ideas far beyond what can be coherently included in these 2,000 words.

Authors

• Matthew McBee, East Tennessee State University

• Scott Joseph Peters, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

• Natasha Lynn Godkin, East Tennessee State University