In a 2/14/99 Phys-L posting titled "Re: First year concept baseline test," Robert Harris writes in response to an earlier posting of Colin T Taylor:
"A 'standard' which is widely used and widely debated is the 'Force Concept Inventory'..... I believe the full text of the exam is available on the net, but I do not have a reference readily available."
This same thread has been woven on the PhysLrnR net (for instructions on how to subscribe go to the Physical Science Resource Center - PSRC - at <http://aapt.org/>). In order to answer Robert Harris's question about availability and to convey further information on the FCI, I have copied below two of the relevant PhysLrnR posts.
One of the PhysLrnR responses to Colin Taylor was by Catherine Crouch (I have moved her references to the end of this post):
"Have you looked at the Force Concept Inventory (1) of Halloun and Hestenes? There are a number of places you can find the test, including its original location (1); but the only printed location I know of for the 1995 revision is Eric Mazur's "Peer Instruction: A User's Manual" (2). (I'm sure it's printed elsewhere; I just don't have the reference. Does anyone else?)"
I responded to Catherine's post as follows (some references have been added and I have included a correction at [...] to my original post):
"As far as I know, the 1995 version of the FCI is NOT printed elsewhere.
However the 1995 version is on the web in portable document file (pdf) form at <http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling/R&E/Research.html>.
Before downloading it one must obtain a password from Larry Dukerich <dukerich@asu.edu>.
The 1995 FCI revision is due to Halloun, Hake, Mosca, and Hestenes ...[as indicated on p. 45, footnote 1a of ref. 2]..... In my opinion, the 1995 version should be used (in preference to the 1992 version) because it contains fewer ambiguities and there is a smaller likelihood of false positives (correct answers for the wrong reasons).
As indicated in ref. 3 'Comparisons of gains attained with the revised FCI on courses with a long history of FCI pre/post testing at Harvard and Indiana University suggest that pretest averages may tend to be somewhat lower with the revised FCI (see courses EM-95C and IU95F of Table I), but that average normalized gain <g> values are not much affected.' That pre-test averages tend to be lower for the 1995 revised FCI has also been observed by Frank Griffin of the Univ. of Akron and by Leslie Dickie of John Abbott College (see Griffin's PhysLrnR post 'Re FCI' of 9/18/97).
Some advice on the administration of the FCI is given in refs. 48 and 49 of ref. 4.
For some recent FCI pre/post testing results by workers at the Univ. of Maryland see ref. 5."
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<hake@ix.netcom.com>
<http://carini.physics.indiana.edu/SDI/>
REFERENCES
1. D. Hestenes, M. Wells, and G. Swackhamer, "Force Concept Inventory,"
Phys. Teach. 30, 141-158 (1992).
2. Eric Mazur, "Peer Instruction: A User's Manual" (Prentice Hall, 1997). For information go to <http://galileo.harvard.edu/>.
3. R.R. Hake, "Interactive-engagement methods in introductory mechanics courses," submitted to the potential new "Journal of Physics Education Research" on 6/19/98 and on the Web at <http://carini.physics.indiana.edu/SDI/>.
4. R.R. Hake, "Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses," Am. J. Phys. 66, 64 (1998) and on the Web at <http://carini.physics.indiana.edu/SDI/>.
5. E.R. Redish and R.N. Steinberg, "Teaching Physics: Figuring Out What Works," Phys. Today 52(1), 24-30 (1999).