The Dehnadi tests of assignment and sequence

Saeed Dehnadi's test, which attempts to measure what mental models participants are using when trying to answer questions about assignment and sequence in programming, has been automated, debugged and improved. You can load the test, the program that can generate questionnaires and analyse the result of questionnaires, and all the files it uses, here.

The new test can be administered on paper or online with a survey engine (SurveyMonkey or LimeSurvey). The survey engines output a spreadsheet that can be marked automatically. It's also possible to transfer paper-test ticks onto a spreadsheet -- we provide the blank spreadsheet -- and have them marked automatically. So the test is now much, much easier to administer: you don't have to struggle with answer sheets or a complicated assessment mechanism.

For clarity we now call the whole thing a questionnaire and Saeed's questions a test. Using our tool you can design your own introductory questions, and you can choose between different versions of the test. Or, if you wish, you can use the pre-packaged questionnaire and test that we provide.

Our documentation provides a full description of how to administer a questionnaire and how to analyse responses, as well as how to generate a new questionnaire if you want to. It also explains what the analysis means and how to interpret it. In particular it describes the mental models that are behind the Dehnadi test.

A new section describes how to analyse responses to an antique version of the test, if you really must.

Downloads

Paper test (new version) -- includes documentation but not the generation / analysis tool
Documentation
The test generation / analysis tool
Some questionnaire descriptions
Some test descriptions

RECENT CHANGES

Added necessary Java libraries to the jar file. Fixed some confusion about test and questionnaire descriptions in the documentation. RB 2016/05/26

Modified the generator/analyser software to . RB 2016/05/26