Campbell's Law is a proverb developed by Donald T. Campbell, a psychologist and social scientist who often writes on research methodology, which states "The more quantitative social indicators used for social decision making, the more subject to the pressure of corruption and the more precise it is to distort and undermine the social process intended to be monitored. "(p.85) On the same note, Campbell also writes:
Achievement tests may be a valuable indicator of the attainment of public schools under normal teaching conditions devoted to general competence. But when the test scores are the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as an indicator of educational status and distort the educational process in an undesirable way. (A similar bias of course surrounds the use of objective tests in the course or as an entrance exam.)
Campbell's law can be seen as an example of cobra effect. Campbell's legal social science principle is sometimes used to denote the negative consequences of high-risk testing in US classrooms. This can be a test for exams or cheats. An example is the "Higher Education Rule" as described in the Learning-Weakness Gap.
Video Campbell's law
Similar rules
There are closely related ideas known under different names, such as Goodhart's law and Lucas's critique. Another concept related to Campbell's law came in 2006 when British researchers Rebecca Boden and Debbie Epstein published evidence-based policy analysis, a practice adhered to by Prime Minister Tony Blair. On paper, Boden and Epstein describe how governments that attempt to base their policies on actual evidence can end up producing damaged data because "it seeks to capture and control the production process of knowledge to the point where the type of 'research' might best be described as' evidence-based Policy'. "
When a person distorts the decision to increase performance measures, they often replace, believing that their size is a better measure of actual performance than it really is.
Maps Campbell's law
See also
- Odd incentives
- Reflexivity (social theory)
- Proxy (stats)
- Goodhart Law
Note
References
- Rothstein, Jesse (University of California - Berkeley) "Teaching and Learning" Center for National Education Policy, 13/1/11. http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-learning-about-teaching
- "Learning About Teaching" & amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, 12/10/10. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/college-ready-education/Documents/preliminary-findings-research-paper.pdf
- Berliner, David C. & amp; Nichols, Sharon L. "High-Stakes Testing Will Delay Nation At Risk" Education Week, 3/12/07. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/12/27berliner.h26.html
- Nichols, Sharon L. & amp; Berliner, David C. "Inexorable Indicator and Educator Corruption Through High Tough Testing" Great Lakes Center for Education Research & amp; Exercise, East Lansing, MI, March 2005. http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/documents/EPSL-0503-101-EPRU.pdf
- Nichols, S. L., & amp; Berlner, D. C. (2007). Collateral Damage: How high-risk tests undermine American schools Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press
- Tony Waters, "Campbell's Law, plotting social change, the death of the Vietnam war, and the distribution of condoms in refugee camps" at Ethnography.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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