Campbell's Law

Campbell's Law is an adage developed by Donald T. Campbell.

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decisionmaking, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."¹.

The social science principle of Campbell's Law is sometimes used to point out the negative consequences of high-stakes testing in U.S. classrooms. Such testing is promoted by the No Child Left Behind Act.

What Campbell also states in this principle is that "achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Similar biases of course surround the use of objective tests in courses or as entrance examinations.)" ¹

Campbell's Law was published in 1976 by Donald T. Campbell, an experimental social science researcher and the author of many works on research methodology.

References

*Berliner, David C. & Nichols, Sharon L. "High-Stakes Testing Is Putting the Nation At Risk" Education Week, 3/12/07. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/12/27berliner.h26.html

*Nichols, Sharon L. & Berliner, David C. "The Inevitable Corruption of Indicators and EducatorsThrough High-Stakes Testing" The Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice, East Lansing, MI, March 2005. http://www.greatlakescenter.org/g_l_new_doc/EPSL-0503-101-EPRU-exec.pdf

¹ Campbell's Law: Campbell, Donald T., "Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change" The Public Affairs Center, Dartmouth College, December, 1976. [http://www.wmich.edu/evalctr/pubs/ops/ops08.pdf]

ee also

* Nichols, S. L., & Berlner, D. C. (2007). "Collateral Da