Norm establishment for Chinese Rating Scale of Pupil's Mathematics Abilities

Hanrong WU; Li LI

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Mathematics ability is one of the basic abilities in human intelligence and mathematics disability is a universal type in key period of school-age children to master the mathematical concepts, perform the abstract calculation and form comprehensive mathematics ability, which is lack of a special rating scale and reference norm.

OBJECTIVE:

To establish a suitable evaluated norm for rating scale of pupil's basic mathematical abilities.

DESIGN:

Cross-sectional study of multi-phase stratified cluster random sampling.

SETTING:

The experiment was presided by Tongji Medical College collaborating with the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control of Beijing,Hebei province, Jiangsu province, shangdong province, Lengshuijiang,Hainan province and Hainan province, Herbin Medical University, Anhui Medical University, Sun Yat-sen University of Medical Sciences, West China University of Medical Sciences, Guiyang Medical College, Lanzhou Medical College and other units.

PARTICIPANTS:

Totally 22 039 people were investigated in nationwide,including 14 693 students (7 377 urban ones and 7 316 ones, respectively), who were randomly selected from Grade One to Six of urban and rural general elementary schools.

METHODS:

Between June and September 2003, students from Grade One to Six of general elementary schools were sampled. According to the Fifth National Population Census in 2000 and based on sex, nation, area and city or count, the Chinese Rating Scale of Pupil's Mathematic Abilities was applied in group-test on mathematic abilities of the cluster-selected students with multi-phase-stratified sampling method.MAIN OUTCOME

MEASURES:

Calculative ability, logical thinking and spatial-visual abilities and so on.

RESULTS:

The norm samples of 14 693 subjects including 7 377 urban students and 7 316 rural students all entered the result analysis. ①The mean scores of each sub-test for the two sampled subjects gradiently increased along with grades rising; the scores of subtests among various ages from urban and rural samples (paired comparison) had significant differences (P ＜ 0.05); the scores of sub-tests of urban samples in various grades were higher than those of rural samples (t=2.234-11.766, P ＜ 0.05). The urban (n=7 377) and rural (n=7 316) norms were established, respectively.②The reference norm was composed of converted T score and percentile P,the T scores in every mid-term and final-term were estimated to calculate Z scores; finally, the probability function P under normal distribution was achieved. ③The evaluation of mathematics abilities were classified into 5 grades it was average with the scores of (-x)±s (P=16%-84%); good if between (-x)+s and (-x)+2s (P=84%-97.5%); excellent if exceeded (-x)+2s(P ＞ 97.5%); inferior if between (-x)-s and (-x)-2s(P=16%-2.5%); worse if lower than (-x)-2s (P ＜ 2.5%).

CONCLUSION:

The constituent ratio of normal samples is basically consistent with the data of total population and the distribution of samples in various grades and sexes is nearly equilibrate; there are significant differences in scores of most subtests on mathematics abilities between urban and rural children, which suggest that it is necessary to establish urban and rural norm, respectively.