I am trying to read (and halfway understand) a test manual. Under internal consistency it says that “25 protocols from each 1-year interval between 7 and 17 years of age were selected at random from the normative sample.” It goes on to talk about how coefficients alpha are obtained for the various scores- blah blah blah. My question is, are these 25 protocols -questions- from the tests or 25 actual -tests-? I assume that for internal consistency they would be talking about individual questions, but not being an expert I don’t know…Any help-much appreciated.
I’ve never come across the word protocol used in place of the word question.
Protocol means, in my experience, a set of instructions or procedures. It’s most commonly used in the context diplomacy or medical treatment.
Looking it up through the online American Heritage Dictionary, I find additional definitions:
My guess is that the use of the term in your documents refers to a record of a transaction. Man, I hate academicspiek.
From Merriam-Webster Online:
Your context sounds like definition 4, so the manual is probably talking about 25 tests rather than 25 questions.
I’m going to support brianmelendez, here. From the meaning of “setting out rules” (of etiquette, diplomacy, etc.), the word has picked up the more particular meaning, in science and medicine, of “designing a test/experiment, explaining all the procedures and variables.”
An example is found at GUIDELINES FOR WRITING RESEARCH PROTOCOLS from the NIH Office of Human Subjects Research. Each test has an individual protocol written up beforehand to explain exactly what the test intends to determine, the safeguards that will be followed, the point at which the experiment must be terminated if it appears to be injurious, etc.
Thank you all- the link was great…
Someone told me today to replace the word protocol with procedure (in other words, the test and all the stuff that surrounds it) That was helpful too.