Center for Academic Innovation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America.
Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2023 Aug 18;18(8):e0290109. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290109. eCollection 2023.
Grade point average in "other" courses (GPAO) is an increasingly common measure used to control for prior academic performance and to predict future academic performance. In previous work, there are two distinct approaches to calculating GPAO, one based on only courses taken concurrently (term GPAO) and one based on all previous courses taken (cumulative GPAO). To our knowledge, no one has studied whether these methods for calculating the GPAO result in equivalent analyses and conclusions. As researchers often use one definition or the other without comment on why that choice was made, if the two calculations of GPAO are different, researchers might be inducing systematic error into their results and publishing potentially inaccurate conclusions. We looked at more than 3,700 courses at a public, research-intensive university over a decade and found limited evidence that the choice of GPAO calculation affects the conclusions. At most, one in seven courses could be affected. Further analysis suggests that there may be situations where one form of GPAO may be preferred over the other when it comes to examining inequity in courses or predicting student grades. However, we did not find sufficient evidence to universally recommend one form of GPAO over the other.
其他课程平均绩点（GPAO）是一种越来越常见的衡量标准，用于控制先前的学业表现并预测未来的学业表现。在之前的研究中，有两种截然不同的 GPAO 计算方法，一种基于同时修读的课程（学期 GPAO），另一种基于之前所有修读的课程（累计 GPAO）。据我们所知，没有人研究过这两种 GPAO 计算方法是否会得出等效的分析和结论。由于研究人员经常使用一种定义而不说明为什么选择了该定义，如果 GPAO 的两种计算方法不同，那么研究人员可能会在其结果中引入系统误差，并发表潜在不准确的结论。我们研究了一所公立、研究型大学十年来的 3700 多门课程，发现很少有证据表明 GPAO 的计算选择会影响结论。最多只有七分之一的课程可能会受到影响。进一步的分析表明，在研究课程中的不平等或预测学生成绩时，可能存在一种形式的 GPAO 优于另一种形式的情况。然而，我们没有发现足够的证据可以普遍推荐一种 GPAO 优于另一种。
