Validation of an entrance examination in the study domain of business and economics – A national and international comparative study of universities and universities of applied sciences (Project WiWiSET)

The WiWiSET project employs a German edition (so called TEL-D) of the standardized Test of Economic Literacy IV (TEL IV). The test has been translated according to the TRAPD process model (Harkness, 2008), and has been adapted according to the International Test Commission’s Guidelines on Test Adaptation (ITC, 2010) for initial diagnostic assessment in higher education in the domain of business and economics. Building on validation work from a preliminary study, the WiWiSET project pursues discriminant, predictive, and incremental validation perspectives. The population for the WiWiSET study includes students at the beginning of a Bachelor’s degree program in the domain of business and economics at a university or university of applied sciences in Germany. As an efficient selection process, we will use a cluster sample with clustering according to types of higher education institutions. To estimate ideally undistorted and generalizable fixed and random effects, we must assess at least 30 higher education institutions. The German Federal Statistical Office has provided a list (04/2015) of all higher education institutions included in the population, from which we will choose 40 institutions at random. To test the research hypotheses of the WiWiSET project, we need two assessment rounds. In the first round of assessment, which is scheduled to take place before the beginning of the summer term 2016 (February–April 2016), first-year students will be assessed at randomly chosen higher education institutions during introductory courses in economic studies. In the second round of assessment to take place at the beginning of the summer term 2017, the same students will be assessed a second time after having completed one year of studies. This way, we aim to assess their study progress during the orientation phase of the Bachelor’s degree program so as to examine the predictive validity of the TEL-D in terms of academic courses completed during the first year of studies.