The Psyc 406 Collection
What’s in a name?
I was really happy when I read Thimbles’ post https://medium.com/psyc-406/c83b22032594 examining the statistical properties of our collection of blog posts. It helped organize the experience for me a little bit.
It does make me wonder though about the scope and the depth of the writing. It is surely not easily captured with statistics.
How many words does it take to summarize the meaning of a post? How many different constructs are being explored?
What is the cognitive architecture of the collection? How are different constructs related?
What is the underlying tone of the collection — is it generally positive or negative towards the topic (psychological testing)?
How much of the collection deals with narrow tests and constructs vs. broad principles and core issues?
Has there been much interaction between the participants?
What has been learned? What has changed from earlier in the semester?
Unfortunately the heavy skew of post submissions at the end of the semester precludes examining temporal changes effectively. (Maybe I’ll ask for a minimum of 1 post every 2 weeks next year).
This is my first attempt to summarize the collection, and I'm sure there will be others. The thing is I know I will keep reading the posts long after the semester is over. I'm still formulating my research questions, but I'm sure there is something interesting there!
As I sit here having received 0 submissions in the past few hours, it appears the tsunami is over. First time I can sit back and begin to think about the 500 posts.
One impression I get is Surprise — many people seemed to be waking up to the ubiquity of tests and testing. It’s everywhere, and it’s a natural process, fraught with problems of reliability and validity, but inescapable.
After that there seemed to be a sense of Power — now that we know it exists and what it does, we can use it, for different purposes (knowledge, prediction and control, fun…).
There is also Fear — that one might be the “victim” of unfair, painful or manipulative testing.
Also Absurdity — about some of the ridiculous tests, the total time wasters, and the strangeness of why we are drawn towards tests.
There is also an element of Philosophy — seeing the big picture of how tests fit into things like our search for truth and well-being.
There’s also some Anger and Depression, but I'll leave those for another day.
Like I said earlier, I need to let “The Collection” settle down for a few days, then start re-reading, to see what other thoughts come to mind.
I would certainly be interested to hear from you guys, in the form of comments (or blog posts — haha) about your overall impressions — what “the collection” says to you?
I'll end with 2 quotes from William James:
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
“Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.”
Cheers!
