Award Date

5-1-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Teaching and Learning

First Committee Member

Michael McCreery

Second Committee Member

P.G. Schrader

Third Committee Member

Shelley Kathleen Krach

Fourth Committee Member

Jonathan Hilpert

Number of Pages

124

Abstract

Risk-taking propensity is defined and measured in different ways across the literature, resulting in assessment issues related to construct validity (Bran & Vaidis, 2020). Multimethod assessment approaches can bolster construct validity by capturing more facets of risk-taking propensity (Meyer et al., 2001). Risk-taking propensity is assessed through self-report questionnaires (Zhang et al., 2019), which exhibit good test-retest reliability (Frey et al., 2017) and predictive validity (Beauchamp et al., 2017), and behavioral tasks (Aklin et al., 2005), which are less psychometrically sound, lacking convergent validity and test-retest reliability (Frey et al., 2017). Guided by evidence-centered design principles (Mislevy, 2013), a novel game-based assessment of risk-taking propensity may mitigate the current shortcomings of behavioral tasks. Exploratory factor analysis revealed a well-fitting model and good reliability of the in-game instrumental risk-taking items. The in-game scores weakly correlated with the self-report measure of instrumental risk-taking, but did not have significant correlations with a set of related variables (e.g., financial risk-taking or general risk-taking propensity). The in game instrumental risk-taking scores were predictive of real-world risk-taking behaviors, both in isolation and when modeled with the self-report scores. The in-game assessment is tenable for use in a multimethod approach of measurement in research designs. With dual consideration of both assessment design and game design, game-based assessments can be developed and validated for use in future research.

Keywords

game-based assessment; instrument validation; psychometric assessment; statistical methodology; stealth assessment; video games

Disciplines

Education | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Personality and Social Contexts

File Format

pdf

File Size

1349 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Download


Share

COinS