Abstract Scientific reasoning encompasses the cognitive skills used when conducting a deliberate scientific investigation. As there are not that many instruments available for assessing scientific reasoning in children, a new performance-based test was developed that taps children’s command of five key scientific reasoning processes (predicting, experimenting, interpreting, evaluating data, and drawing conclusions). Results of this first validation study with 170 children age 7–10 showed that the test has good item characteristics and acceptable reliability. Initial validity evidence indicated that children’s test scores were unaffected by gender and prior domain knowledge and largely independent of language and math abilities.

中文翻译：

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儿童基于表现的科学推理测试的开发和初步验证

摘要 科学推理包括进行深思熟虑的科学调查时使用的认知技能。由于可用于评估儿童科学推理的工具并不多，因此开发了一种新的基于表现的测试，利用儿童对五个关键科学推理过程（预测、实验、解释、评估数据和得出结论）的掌握程度。对 170 名 7-10 岁儿童进行的第一次验证研究的结果表明，该测试具有良好的项目特征和可接受的可靠性。最初的有效性证据表明，儿童的考试成绩不受性别和先前领域知识的影响，并且在很大程度上与语言和数学能力无关。