Indicators, Variables and Factors.

An Educational variable (denoted by an English Alphabet, like X) is a

measurable characteristics of a student. Variables may be directly measurable as in
X=age X=height of a student. However, many times a variable cannot be directly
measured like when we want to measure class participation of a student. For
those variables where direct measurements are not feasible, we introduce the
concept of indicators.
An Indicator, I, denotes the presence or absence of a measured characteristics.
Thus;
I=1, if the characteristics is present
=0, if the characteristics is absent
For the variable X=class participation, we can let I1, I2,. In denotes the
participation of a student in n class participation and let X=sum of the Is divided by
n recitations. Thus if there where n=10 recitations and the student participated in 5
of these 10, then X=5/10 or 50%.
Indicators are the building blocks of educational measurement upon which all
other forms of measurement are built. A group of indicators constitute a variable. A
group of variable form a construct or factor. The variables which form a factor
correlate highly with each other but have low correlations with other variables in
another group.
Example: The following variables were measured in a battery of tests.

X1= Computational Skills

X2= Reading Skills
X3= Vocabulary
X4= Logic and Reasoning
X5= Sequence and Series
Group 2: (X2, X3) = Language ability factor
Group 3: (X6) = Psychomotor Skills
The first group is called a mathematical ability factor The second group is
called a language ability factor while the third group (with only one variable) is
called a psychomotor ability factor
In educational measurement, we shall be concerned with indicator, variables
and factors of interest in the field of education.

Reported by: Anna L. Alliquer

BSE 2B-A