On the result of university admission test, the consequence of failure in the decision making due to inaccurate test score information will have bad impacts on the person in concern. It can affect their self-esteem or they even lose their future. This is what the experts say as "high stake exams" whose measurement results are made the basis for the decision that can alter somebody’s life.
“Therefore, evaluation of the test quality in various admission tests should no longer be limited to item analysis and predictive validity estimate only, but should also involve the use of scores based on fair score interpretations," said Prof. Dr. Saifuddin Azwar, M.A., on Thursday (20/5) at the UGM Senate Hall when he was inaugurated as Professor of Psychology of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM).
Delivering a speech entitled Selection Decision in High Stake Exams: Psychometric Discourse, Saifuddin explained that fairness in test score interpretation cannot be expected from a test that is biased. A test is considered biased if two subject groups, for example, male and female candidates with equal potential will tend to have different scores. The bias is a measurement problem which makes one certain subject group has a bigger chance to obtain higher scores than the other who actually has equal potential. "This bias happens due to systematic error coming from the characteristic of the subject irrelevant to the purpose of the test but which affects the scores," explained the man who achieved master’s degree in statistics and measurement from University of Iowa in 1982.
In a meeting with State Universities’ Faculty of Law, the Minister of Law and Human Rights expressed the various decisions of the judges are still vulgarly chaotic and became the spotlight in society. This condition encourages law education reform in Indonesia. "So, it’s no longer a theoretical context, because when we are talking about the legal establishment, it’s not separated from the fundamental knowledge of the legislators in the form of legal drafter," he said.
Although Article 20 paragraph 1 of the Constitution mentions that legislation is the House of Representatives, yet the society can not expect much, because the decisions of the Parliament serve more as a form of recognition of political decisions. "Therefore, it is not substantial, because the board members come from parties that do not necessarily have legal background and skills," he said.
He said that the government is the one that actually most expected in performing the functions of legislation, because it is a permanent organization and run by professionals. In addition, the university is expected to help.
As many as 102 people participated in the meeting, consisting of Deans and/or representatives from 34 Faculty of Law of State Universities.