Indirect Assessment Techniques

Indirect Assessments gather information quickly through means other than looking at actual samples of student work, but may not provide real evidence of student learning (for example, surveys, exit interviews, and focus groups).

• Conducting Indirect Assessments - Links to help programs select, design, implement and score direct assessments (University of Michigan)
• Focus Groups provide “an opportunity for participants and the facilitator to exchange information related to the topic or group of topics for which the data are being collected… The insights and data produced by the interaction of participants in focus groups can provide feedback to initiate change, confirm satisfaction with services, or help generate new hypotheses” (Focus Group Guidelines, Austin Community College, 2002)
  • Basics of Conducting Focus Groups – Includes preparing, developing questions, planning, facilitating, and immediately after the session (Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.)
  • Focus Group Guideline - from Austin Community College
• Interviews “allow deep exploration of an individual's experience…typically only a small number of people can be interviewed due to resource limitations…Interviews are excellent for deepening understanding of issues identified using surveys.” (Assessment for Curricular Improvement, Michigan Engineering)
  • Guidelines for Conducting Research Interviews – Includes preparing, types of interviews, types of topics in questions, sequence and wording of questions, carrying out the interview and afterwards (Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.)
  • How to Conduct an Interview - Describes four stages of an interview:  arrangements, preparation, the actual interview and the reconstruction
• Surveys/Questionnaires “gather students' perceptions of learning, opinions about learning or reflections on learning.” They are “efficient for gathering information from a large number of students.” (Assessment for Curricular Improvement, Michigan Engineering)
  • Conducting Web-Based Surveys – from Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation (Solomon, David J., 2001)
  • Surveys or Questionnaires - Guidelines for writing surveys and choosing who to survey (University of Michigan)