APPLICATION OF ICT FOR EXPERT ASSESSMENT OF LATENT VARIABLES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL RESEARCH

The article analyzes the approaches to the study of latent variables in psychological and pedagogical research. The study confirms that some competences and personal qualities belong to the latent constructs (tolerance, readiness for life-long learning, value orientations, etc.) that are difficult to measure. To make their assessment more accurate and reliable, the expert evaluation method with ICT support is suggested providing for the involvement of a greater number of experts in the assessment process. The pedagogical expertise, covering a set of procedures necessary for getting collective expert opinion or assessment of a pedagogical object, phenomenon or process, is considered as the core of the expert evaluation method. The developed ICT assessment support for latent variables evaluation is oriented at the three-level classification of competences. It provides for determining the level of development of social-personal, general-scientific, instrumental, general-professional and specialized-professional competences (the first level of classification) and their constituent structural parts (the second level of classification) as well as the level of acquired knowledge, skills, values and personal qualities (the third level of classification). The developed ICT assessment tool includes the data concerning the Author (Developer), Experts, Expert Assessment, the indices obtained as a result of the analysis of Expert Assessment (Coefficients). Experts are expected to assess the significance of smaller structural units correlating them with the larger ones. Initially, the development level of every individual competence in correlation with the social and professional competence is assessed in percentage; the acquisition of social and professional competence is taken as 100%. Then the significance index of the competences that are the structural parts of every given competence is determined; the significance index of competence structural parts in reference to the relevant competence is assessed