Describes study that compared the administration of the Microtest computer version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) with administration procedures for the traditional paper and pencil version. Highlights include an anxiety inventory; attitude scales; rank order and reliability; correlation analyses; power analyses; and…

Investigates the empirical validity of the Monash-Melbourne computer adaptive test for French (French CAT). The article focuses on the accuracy of the French CAT as a tool for streaming incoming university students into three levels of a first-year (post-high school) French course. The test is demonstrated to be a good predictor of short-term…

Ten groups (2-5 members each) of tenth-grade Israeli English-as-a-Second-Language students took first a group quiz and then individual quizzes on the same material. Comparison of the results showed that, especially for weaker students, group work and group grades offered some advantages over individual work and assessment. (CNP)

Establishing stability, defined as observing minimal measurement error in a test-retest assessment, is vital to validating psychometric tools. Correlational methods, such as Pearson product-moment, intraclass, and kappa are tests of association or consistency, whereas stability or reproducibility (regarded here as synonymous) assesses the…

Practicing clinicians frequently offer judgments about aspects of swallowing physiology rather than performing actual measurements. Little is known about the accuracy of those judgments. The purpose of this preliminary study was to explore agreement of clinicians' judgments of pharyngeal swallow response time (PSRT) with temporal measurements of…

The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) is a functional assessment used in approximately 27 states to evaluate youth service outcomes. The CANS purports to measure both the youth's risk and protective factors, but its validity is largely un-researched. This study compares ratings of 304 delinquent youth on the CANS and ratings on a…

In the fall of 1988, a stratified sample of courses at City, Mesa, and Miramar colleges in the San Diego Community College District (California) were surveyed as part of a skills assessment research project. For classes into which students were placed on the basis of assessment test scores (in English writing and reading, and mathematics), student…

The predictive and incremental validity of both the Old and New Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) was examined and compared with a sample of over 300 medical students. Results of zero order and incremental validity coefficients, as well as prediction models resulting from all possible subsets regression analyses using Mallow's Cp criterion,…

A study evaluated the effectiveness of pretesting infantry soldiers scheduled to take written Skill Qualification Tests (SQT) in order to determine their training needs prior to official testing. During the study, researchers developed and field-tested a pretest for the SQT that was based on the 11B1 Infantryman Soldier's Manual and the 1980 SQT…

This descriptive research study examined the validity of an adaptation of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) that uses a videotape with questions in American Sign Language with a special group of hearing-impaired college students, assuming that LASSI is still reliable for this group. The study was limited to prelingually deaf…

Research on assessing the cultural fairness of individual test items is reviewed, with emphasis on Birnbaum's three-parameter logistic model. As defined in this review, differential item characteristics are exhibited when examinees from one group have a lower probability of answering correctly than do examinees of equal ability from another group.…

A study was conducted to examine the relationship of perceptual motor skills as measured by the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test to word recognition, oral reading, and silent reading. In addition, perceptual motor skill and auditory comprehension were compared as correlates of the three reading variables. Subjects were 60 primary grade students in…

A comparison of four frequently used standard setting methods for deriving cut-off scores with respect to the expected performance of minimally competent students, is presented in this paper. Ten Kansas Competency Based Tests, in reading and mathematics, were administered across five grade levels in a state-wide minimal competency testing program.…

Many researchers have questioned the validity of the underlying assumptions, the psychometric properties, and conceptualizations for both the older and new measures that generate two independent scores for masculinity and femininity. The assumptions of bipolarity and unidimensionality and the construct validity of existing masculinity/femininity…

Four statistical methods for identifying biased test items were used with data from two ethnic groups (1,691 black and 1,794 white high school seniors). The data were responses to 150 items in five subtests including two traditional tests (reading and mathematics) and three nontraditional tests (picture number test of associative memory, letter…