Understanding Students’ Free-Body Diagrams Using the Metarepresentations Survey for Physics

Study purpose. The Metarepresentations Survey for Physics (MSP) was developed to assess students’ metarepresentational knowledge during physics problem solving.  Materials and methods. The survey was given to 288 introductory-level college physics students. Psychometric properties of the instrument, including construct validity, were evaluated by confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis.  Results. We also examined students’ beliefs about the use of free-body diagrams, as well as thoroughly examined the link between students’ problem solving success and free-body diagrams.  Conclusions. We recommend the use of the MSP for physics instructors and science education researchers who want to evaluate students’ free-body diagrams. Additionally, we suggest the subject of physics can be replaced with chemistry, genetics, or another science to assess metarepresentations in other domains.