Measuring What Students Know: SNAP’s Guidelines and Suggestions for Assessing Goal 1 Content in Psychology

Abstract

Although many psychology departments and instructors are aware of the American Psychological Association Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major Version 2.0, they are often less aware of the means by which to assess student mastery of the recommended goals. Our purpose is to discuss general principles for assessment, offer a psychology learner taxonomy that aligns with Goal 1 of the Guidelines 2.0, and present a rubric for reviewing assessments. Goal 1 of the Guidelines 2.0 is based on content knowledge in psychology. Whereas most assessments allow for the measure of the mastery of content to different extents, the results of those assessments can be invalid due to the design or inappropriate use of the rubric. The working group at the Summit on National Assessment of Psychology addressed these issues and curated evidence-informed assessment exemplars designed to measure content knowledge in psychology.