CONSTRUCT MAP AS A FUTURE STANDARD FOR EVALUATING VOCATIONAL STUDENTS’ CREATIVE INNOVATIONS

Abstract

Office of the Vocational Education Commission in Thailand has recognized the significance of developing creative innovations to propel national economic growth. Therefore, they have annually organized a competition for creative inventions by young people. However, the research on how vocational students’ creative inventions are measured is still underrated. To address this issue, we propose Item Response Theory and Construct Map as a novel measurement tool used to quantitatively measure students’ latent performance. The development process consists of six steps: initial model development, determining level of innovation, rating scale construction, item estimation, application of standard setting, and revision and reanalysis of Construct Map. The participants were 66 vocational students (n=66) engaging in Junior Invention VEC Thailand 2025 in Pathumthani Province. The eight-criteria creative innovation rating scale (C1-C8) was developed to measure innovation performance and innovation capacity. Construct Map consists of four levels: the lowest level is incremental innovation followed by purpose-driven innovation and moderate innovation respectively, and the highest level is breakthrough innovation. The final process is the application of standard setting (cut scores) for each level of competence to Construct Map. The novel process enumerated in this paper will elucidate how creative innovations and vocational students’ latent performance can be quantitatively measured on a continuum scale.