Page 43 - Balancing between the present and the past

agent items for both instruments were primarily responsible for this low internal consistency. Excluding these items from the analysis resulted in higher internal consistency scores for both instruments (slavery: α = .49, Nazi Party: α = .69).
Table 5. Internal consistency of two instruments (N = 1,270) Slavery .60 .42 .54 .25
Nazi Party .62 .30 .51 .62
.49 .69
2
Measuring historical contextualization
Instrument
(α) POP
(α) ROA
(α) CONT
(α) POP, ROA, and CONT
(α) POP and CONT
Note. POP = present-oriented perspective, ROA = role of the historical agent, and CONT = historical contextualization.
2.5.3 Predictive validity
To assess the predictive validity of the instruments, we tested two hypotheses: namely, that the highest HPT scores would come from students with (1) high scores on the Dutch standardized final test for upper elementary students (Citotoets) and (2) high grades in history. Because historical reasoning and historical content knowledge form a substantial part of the final test, high scores on this test should be successful predictors for HPT performance. In line with Hartmann and Hasselhorn (2008), we also used history grades as a predictor for HPT performance. In Table 6, we present these correlation coefficients; the missing data are due to the non-obligatory nature of the Citotoets, such that not every Dutch elementary school (approximately 15%) has implemented this test (Dutch National Institute for Educational Measurement, 2013). The missing data regarding students’ history grades exist because elementary school students do not have separate grades for history. We found a small but significant correlation between students’ HPT scores and their Citotoets scores for the Nazi Party instrument but not for the slavery instrument. In addition, in contrast with Hartmann and Hasselhorn (2008), we did not find a significant correlation between students’ history grades and their HPT scores.
Table 6. Correlations between HPT scores and student characteristics Nazi Party .17* -.02
Slavery .06 -.01 n 659 885
Note. *Correlation is significant at the .01 level.
Instrument
Citotoets
Students’ history grades
41