Age-related nuances in knowledge assessment

Abstract

We have no conflicts of interests to disclose. We confirm that the work conforms to Standard 8 of the American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. We thank Diana Steger for developing the large item pool that we partially used in this study and Johannes Zimmermann for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.

Structural invariance of declarative knowledge across the adult lifespan.

“…For declarative knowledge, the breadth and depth of the assessment hinges on the compilation of item sets. Thus, item sampling issues are even more pressing and crucial than for other psychological constructs (Cattell, 1987; Schroeders et al, 2021; Schroeders, Wilhelm, et al, 2016; Steger et al, 2019). Some of the domains are part of school curricula, for example, for the domains of the natural sciences.…”

“…To infer from the content of an item to the opportunity or context at which the content is learned is fuzzy and opaque. For instance, although there are age-related differences in the solution probabilities for specific items, there is no convincing classification of items based on such information (Schroeders et al, 2021). Second, regarding a separation of general and specialized knowledge, recent research based on very broad item samples suggested that even large numbers of highly heterogeneous knowledge domains can be described satisfactorily with a strong general factor in a hierarchical model (Schipolowski et al, 2014; Steger et al, 2019).…”

“…This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. of items based on such information (Schroeders et al, 2021). Second, regarding a separation of general and specialized knowledge, recent research based on very broad item samples suggested that even large numbers of highly heterogeneous knowledge domains can be described satisfactorily with a strong general factor in a hierarchical model (Schipolowski et al, 2014;Steger et al, 2019).…”

“…The present study suggests that such correlational analyses can be valid, especially when knowledge is measured in such breadth and in such age-heterogeneous samples. Considering the item and sample effects observed in knowledge tests (Schroeders et al, 2021;, however, this has to be tested with appropriate statistical methods (e.g., LSEM) for every specific compilation of declarative knowledge items. This study focused on age differentiation, and, thus, on the variance-covariance structure of declarative knowledge.…”

“…This research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to Ulrich Schroeders and Andrea Hildebrandt (SCHR 1591/1-1 and HI 1780/4-1) as part of the Priority Program 1646 "Education as a Lifelong Process". Data from this study has partly been used in Schroeders et al (2021). Both the research question and the methodology differ substantially.…”