Assessment of the Understanding of Statistical Concepts

Much has been written about methods of teaching statistics and about how to assess students' knowledge of statistics, but almost nothing on the extent to which assessment procedures measure whether students understand statistical concepts, or what is involved in the application of techniques, and little research has been done on the development of instruments to measure statistical understanding. This paper reviews work in related areas. Measurement of understanding ideally forms part of most assessment procedures, but it can be hard to isolate the understanding of concepts from knowledge of basic definitions and from computations. A student who has produced a correct "solution" does not necessarily understand the solution, or even the "question" behind it. It should be possible to assess understanding through the practical skills of doing and communicating statistics.