Chapter 6
Assessment in the Affective Domain
The affective domain is a part of a system that was published in 1965 for identifying,
understanding, and addressing how people learn.
The affective domain is one of three domains in Bloom's Taxonomy, with the other two
being the cognitive and psychomotor (Bloom, et al., 1956).
The Affective domain describes learning objectives that emphasize a feeling tone, an
emotion, or a degree of acceptance or rejection.
The affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom, Masia, 1973) includes the manner in which we
deal with things emotionally such as feelings, values, appreciation,
enthusiasm, motivations, and attitudes.
Affective Learning Competencies
Instructional objectives are specific, measurable, observable student behaviors.
Objectives are the foundation upon which you can build lessons and assessments that you
can prove meet your overall lesson goals.
Think of objectives as tools you use to make sure you reach your goals.
The purpose of the objectives is to ensure that learning is focused clearly enough that
both students and teacher know what is going on, and so learning can be objectively
measured
Level Definition Example
Receiving Being aware of or attending to something Individual would read a book
in the environment passage about civil rights
Responding Showing some new behaviors as a result Individual would answer
of the experience questions about the book, read
another by the same author,
another book about civil rights,
etc.
Level Definition Example
Valuing Showing some definite involvement or The individual might
commitment demonstrate this by voluntarily
attending a lecture on civil
rights
Organization Integrating a new value into one’s The individual might arrange a
general set of values, giving it some civil rights rally
ranking among one’s general priorities
Level Definition Example
Characterization Acting consistently with the new The individual is firmly
value committed to the value, perhaps
becoming a civil rights leader.
Attitudes
Are defined as a mental predisposition to act that is expressed by evaluating a particular
entity with some degree of favor and disfavor.
Attitudes are also attached to mental categories.
Mental orientations towards concepts are generally referred to as values.
Attitudes are comprised of 4 components:
1. Cognitions
2. Affect
3. Behavioral Intentions
4. Evaluation
Motivation
Refers to initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of human behavior.
While ability refers to what children can do, motivation refers to what children will do.
Types of Motivation
1. Intrinsic motivation
2. Extrinsic motivation
Self-efficacy
Is an impression that one is capable of performing in a manner or attaining goals.
It is a belief that one has the capabilities to execute the courses of actions required to
manage prospective situations.
Development of Assessment Tools
Assessment tools in the affective domain, in particular, those which are used to assess
attitudes, interests, motivations, and self-efficacy.
1. Self Report
It is the most common measurement tool in the affective domain.
It essentially requires an individual to provide an account of his/her attitude or
feelings toward a concept or idea or people.
2. Rating Scales
Is a set of categories designed to elicit information about a quantitative attribute in
social science
Common examples are the Likert scale and 1-10 scales for which a person selects
the number which is considered to reflect the perceived quality of a product.
A. Semantic Differential Scales
The Semantic Differential (SD) tries to assess an individual’s reaction to
specific words, ideas or concepts in terms of ratings on bipolar scales
defined with contrasting adjectives at each end.
B. Thurstone Scale
Louis Thurstone is considered the “The father of attitude measurement”.
He address the issue on how favorable an individual is with regard to a
given issue.
He developed an attitude continuum to determine the position of
favorability on the issue.
C. Likert Scale
In 1932, Likert developed the method of summative rating (Likert’s Scale)
which is still widely used today.
D. Guttman Scale
In 1944, Guttman developed the Scalogram Analysis, Cumulative Scaling,
or as usually called Guttman scaling.
The major characteristic of this scale is that the response to one item helps
predict the responses to other items.
E. Checklists
Another common and perhaps the easiest instrument in the affective
domain is to construct the checklist.
Steps in the construction of checklist
1. Enumerate all the attributes and characteristics you wish to observe.
2. Arrange these attributes as a “shopping list” of characteristics.
3. Ask the students to mark those attributes which are present and leave blank those
which are not.
