The author conducted a cross national analysis of sociological research reported in leading journals at two points in time over a ten year period to determine if sociologists' ability to produce valid social generalizations had improved significantly over the recent past. The official journals of the United States (American Sociological Review),…

A study was conducted at Los Angeles Pierce College (LAPC) to test the relative reliability of small-sample telephone interviewing and large-sample mailings with postcard and telephone reminders for student follow-up. The study involved conducting a telephone survey of 245 former students who had enrolled at LAPC in four program areas, and a mail…

The subscales of the How I See Myself Scale were originally established by using a principal components analysis on item scores for a sample of 4,217 elementary school children in grades three to six. A re-analysis of the same data using a common factor solution (using test communalities instead of units in the major diagonal of the correlation…

To investigate the effect of violating the assumption of equal item difficulty on Kuder-Richardson (KR) Formula 21 reliability coefficient, 670 eighth-and ninth- grade students were administered 26 short, homogeneous "tests" of mathematics concepts and skills. Both KR Formula 20 and KR Formula 21 were used to estimate reliability on each…

The problems of developing a low cost, quality institutional research program capable of longitudinal research, continuous broad bandwidth monitoring and data comparisons with other institutions, led to the development of the Hampshire Cycles Survey as an initial set of student quality of life indicators. Cycles is a multidimensional survey…

The reliability and construct validity of the Kohlberg Moral Judgment Scale, the Gilligan et al's Sexual Moral Development Scale, Maitland and Goldman's Objective Moral Development Scale, and Hogan's Maturity of Moral Judgment Scale were compared for a sample of male and female graduate students. (EVH)

Analysis and comparison of three independent transcriptions of the same speech sample collected from a hearing child with deaf parents resulted in two descriptions of the child's phonological system--one based on a liberal estimate and the other a conservative estimate of the potential error in the transcripts. (Author/CB)

Issues arising in international comparison of academic degrees and credentials, including institutional vs. governmental responsibility for the determination of equivalence, admission criteria and prerequisites for foreign student enrollment, and necessary qualifications for visiting faculty, are discussed in the context of the European Convention…

The 1976 UNESCO International Standard Classification of Education is a step forward in describing and understanding the structure of higher education systems and their links with national economies, but some problems of classification, documentation, and standardization remain to be solved. (MSE)

A study of the comparability of results of two techniques of testing, the traditional approach and that of giving the students the questions before the examination, revealed little difference in the two approaches' results, and supports the use of "prior notice" to reduce test anxiety. (MSE)

Two studies examining the effect of grade inflation on the piling up of grades in fewer grade categories and on the reliability of grade point averages found that reliability suffered significantly only in graduate study in which almost all grades were in two categories, A and B. Some other small effects were found in different rating scales. (MSE)

Although computer-based testing is becoming popular, many of these tests are limited to the use of selected-response item formats due to the difficulty in mechanically scoring constructed-response items. This limitation is unfortunate because many constructs, such as writing proficiency, can be measured more directly using items that require…

Factors seem to indicate that the OQS could be effectively substituted for the NTE as a screening measure for graduate students in education. The D-48 was not added to the prediction equation, since it made a negligible contribution to the total prediction. (Authors/CB)

Reappraises the validity and reliability of Vocabulary and Block Design (V-VD) as a short form of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPI). Presents a table for converting the sum of scaled scores into an estimate of Full…