Measurement and Assessment Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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All disciplines use some form of measurement for planning, performing, developing, and other purposes. They also seek to assign values or measures of quality and quantity to their objects of study, which can then be used as assessments of the subject. Much of modern measurement is performed as some form of descriptive statistics.

In the military, for example, the measurement may be the amount of ground captured, bridges wrecked, enemy units destroyed, or miles advanced into enemy territory. Similar goals are usually set in sports: a game is won by the team with the highest score, and this is usually achieved by the team with the longest possession time of the ball or puck, the most times at bat, or most ground advances toward a goal. In these and all other activities of life, measurement is an important task for determining what has been done and then assessing what needs to be done.

In the life sciences, measurements are most basically performed as a counting of the number of particular features of a representative member of a species; anomalies are also noted accordingly. For example, birds have two wings, fish have two primary fins, and dogs, cats, and horses have four legs. This form of measurement is very basic but is still done to describe a newly discovered species.

Other forms of measurement are those used to count the population of a species as well as its range. Some species such as dogs have large populations. Other species such as panda bears are confined to a small area and have small populations.

Counting the populations and the carrying capacity of an area is important to land and animal management. For example, an assessment of the size of a deer herd after a severe winter could be an important measure that could help forestry officials decide what extent of hunting should be allowed in the autumn. Or a survey of the size of the nesting habitat of migratory birds in the northern United States and in Canada (or in Europe and Siberia) could be an important study of the future prospects of the ability of species to survive, let alone flourish.

Many organizations working in the area of environmental protection or poverty reduction are seeking new instruments of measurement and assessment to use in setting goals. Key to the development of strategies for sustainable development that will help reduce poverty is the invention of measurement scales or tools that will aid decision making in public policy formulation.

In the case of those working with the poor in various areas of the world, the issue of defining poverty and the question of how to define levels of power is a subject of significant controversy. Because the resources available to people in the Philippines, for example, differ from the resources and needs of people in Brazil, Israel, or even in Japan, it is difficult to come to a single way of measuring the poverty of people in these countries.

In the Philippines, coconut palm trees grow readily. Any family with a small plot of land can easily grow coconuts trees, which provide food, fuel (the leaves and branches), and materials for other uses. However, in other countries, coconut trees may not grow easily, if at all. Therefore, to measure the impact and the absence of this resource and many other differences is difficult.

In Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, there have been debates for decades about the definition of poverty. However, there has been no universal agreement on the definition, nor has there been agreement about the approaches best used to define poverty. The struggle to define poverty in a scientific manner has been ongoing since the Industrial Revolution when impoverished workers inspired intellectuals to seek solutions to the problem of poverty.

Other ways in which measurements are made are of the factors of weather: temperature, wind, moisture, and clouds. These measurements provide data about the atmosphere, which become the weather of the day or hour. However, over a long period of time they become the climate and indicators used to assess whether the climate is warming or cooling.

Measurements in medicine are crucial to both individual patients and the physicians who treat them. For example, measurements of a patient’s vital signs, blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, white blood cell counts, and other factors are important measurements in determining the health of a particular body.

Some medical measurements and appropriate assessments are vital to the public at large. Public health officials keep watch on the number of cases of certain types of diseases. Significant increases may require major interventions to stop the advance of a disease. For example, a rapid rise in the number of E. coli cases may mean that restaurants or their suppliers of green onions, lettuce, carrots, or other vegetables may have to be shut down. Decisions in these kinds of cases may affect the financial success of individuals and companies, but they vitally affect the immediate health of people.

Statistical measurements of diseases are important to public health officials. The annual estimates of the number of influenza cases and the estimates of the likely mortality that will occur in population groups that are most vulnerable are a major health concern. It is because of measurements in the differences between serious and fatal reactions to taking vaccines compared with debilitation and fatality rates from the actual disease that decisions are usually made for urging large scale vaccinations. For example, if there is a sudden rise in the number of cases of tuberculosis or an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever, rapid responses can be made if the proper measurements are made in a timely manner.

Pharmaceutical companies aggressively develop new drugs by assessing the responses of drugs to viruses, bacteria, fungi, or parasites. However, they also engage in high throughput to assess chemicals in varied doses to various receptor sites in proteins, or in cells so that new leads for drug development can be identified.

Measurements of humans may be the most controversial of all measurements. From time to time the life sciences have provided material that has brought about political theory used to justify discrimination on the basis of race or to justify treating humans in an inhumane way. All people differ and those differences can often be easily recognized. However, establishing criteria for treating people unequally is often done by means of pseudo-measurements. In the case of natural differences, such as those of youth or age, different patterns of treatment are usually justified because of ancient tradition rather than by sound ethical reasoning.

All measurements of infants will show that they lack a number of capacities and that this justifies treating them differently from adults. For example, pharmaceutical companies spend great sums of money developing medicines and other drugs. These drugs have to be carefully tested and the results of the test assessed before they can be safely prescribed. It is a fact of biology that infants and children cannot absorb or utilize the same quantities of medicine as adults, and different doses must be prescribed.

Perhaps the most common forms of measurement and assessment are found in educational institutions. Teachers use many instruments to measure learning. However, test results also need to be weighed against other factors. Mere memorization will carry students to a certain point, but more important than mastery of the facts of a body of knowledge are the insights that come from applying information to a set of problems or to a set of facts. When this is accomplished, analysis can provide deeper types of information.

The use of biological ideas as a measure for assessing worth has a long history. Almost immediately after the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859, Herbert Spencer wrote Social Statics, from which developed the sociopolitical philosophy of Social Darwinism. The claim of Spencer, of his follower William Graham Sumner, and others was that humans compete for the resources of life. The unsuccessful and the unfit die off. The successful, it turned out, were the rich and the unfit were the poor. Using this measure of success, public policy advocates in the later 1800s argued against helping the poor. A similar politico-philosophic argument had been made in England in the early 1800s following the publication of Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population. Supporters of Malthus argued that because population increased geometrically and food supplies increased arithmetically, it was illogical to aid the poor with poverty programs. The Utilitarian doctrines of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill were developed and applied in opposition. The measure of sound policy, said Bentham, was its ability to deliver the greatest amount of good to the greatest number of people.

One of the most controversial forms of measurement is that found in intelligence studies. IQ tests measure the intelligence quotient of a person. A person’s IQ is their mental age divided by their chronological age. A child of eight with a mental age of 12 years will have an IQ of 1.5. If this were applied to a scale in which the statistical norm for the general population was 100, this child would have an IQ of 150. If this figure were more than two standard deviations away from the norm, the child would rank in the category of genius.

Intelligence tests, such as those developed by Alfred Binet at Stanford University and others, have been used to measure people and then to categorize them for jobs or other institutional situations. In the case of those falling at the bottom of the scale, they have sometimes been assigned to mental institutions as being mentally unfit for independent living in society.

Critics have, in many cases, claimed that IQ testing used as a criterion for admission to colleges or universities is unjust and discriminatory. One frequent argument is that these types of tests are culturally loaded. For example, immigrant children may be very bright, but their language skills are weak in the language in which the measurement and assessment is being made.

It may also be that children from underprivileged homes perform less well because they are undernourished or simply unexposed to the wider world. Another issue is the meaning of intelligence that IQ tests are supposed to measure. The term intelligence has never been precisely defined, which means that there is an open question as to what exactly an IQ test is measuring.

Economic measurements usually appear easily stated in terms of money. However, in many countries wealth is not measured in terms of cash or money; other resources may be used. While it is easy to appear to be using a scientific definition in terms of resources such as goats, sheep, services, or other values that are not readily stated in cash terms, these apparently operational measures of wealth may create false assessments. It is easy to raise a great number of rabbits; however, if a market for rabbits is significantly lacking, then this will not provide an equivalent mechanism for assessing value as cash does. Efforts at using scientific definitions to permit measurements that can be correlated between income and standards of living changes have proved to be difficult.

Bibliography:

Ian J. Deary, Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001);
Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (W.W. Norton, 1996);
Robert L. Linn and M. David Miller, Measurement and Assessment in Teaching (Prentice-Hall, 2004);
Cynthia C. Norkin and D. Joyce White, Measurement of Joint Motions: A Guide to Goniometry (F.A. Davis, 2003).