A framework is described for preparing process profiles of two different surveys conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): the Recent College Graduates Survey and the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) Fall Enrollment Survey. The process profile examines the adequacy of the entire survey process, using…

The development of a graduate survey at Ohio Dominican College is described, and guidelines for implementing a graduate survey are provided. The survey assessed student characteristics, activities during college, endeavors after graduation, and attitudes, goals, and values. Project goals included: developing a graduate survey that could also be…

This guide presents detailed information concerning the purposes and process of program evaluation, the role of the evaluator, and the development of an evaluation plan or design. Instruction is provided in selecting or developing assessment instruments, collecting and analyzing data, reporting evaluation results and applying the findings. The…

Finding ways to improve the design of large-scale tests is a timely issue. Recent changes in Federal legislation (including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) have placed greater emphasis on accountability via large-scale tests. Students who have previously been exempted from large-scale assessments, including students with disabilities and…

As noted in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD's) "PISA 2000 Technical Report" (OECD, 2002), the Austrian sample for the PISA 2000 assessment did not adequately cover students enrolled in combined school and work-based vocational programmes as required by the OECD's technical standards for PISA. The…

Noting the paucity of information on the effectiveness of the growing numbers of programs promoting responsible fatherhood, this report examines the evaluability of responsible fatherhood programs. The report provides policymakers with an evaluation design for use with a variety of responsible fatherhood programs, and gives direction to…

Conversational and narrative language samples were elicited from 16 school-age individuals with mental retardation and 16 typically developing children matched for mental age. Analysis demonstrated that both groups produced more syntactically complex language during narration, whereas they were more talkative during conversation. Results support…

The study of "zonation", the distribution of plants and animals into distinct spatial areas, is a great way to introduce students to basic ecological concepts. Students can conduct methodical, quantifying surveys of zones in areas as diverse as mudflats, beaches, forests, wetlands, and fields. Students collect data from these areas with field…

With the increasing globalization of human resources practices, a commensurate increase in demand has occurred for multi-language ("global") personality norms for use in selection and development efforts. The combination of data from multiple translations of a personality assessment into a single norm engenders error from multiple sources. This…

Under the Drug-Free Schools and Campuses Act, institutions of higher education are required to review the effectiveness of their alcohol and drug prevention programs biannually. This guide offers a method for gathering and interpreting student survey data on alcohol-related problems based on the methodology of the College Alcohol Survey developed…

A survey was conducted of expert instructional design practitioners about their use of developmental testing and revision procedures. The degree of correspondence was examined between published recommended practice and actual practice, as reported by 90 respondents to a questionnaire. The surveyed sample were members of the National Society for…

This paper examines how various equating methods are affected by: (1) sampling error; (2) sample characteristics; and (3) characteristics of anchor test items. It reviews empirical studies that investigated the invariance of equating transformations, and it discusses empirical and simulation studies that focus on how the properties of anchor tests…

This study explored the assumption that the percentile rank of a group of students should be expected to remain the same on a post-test as on a pretest when the treatment of the group in the intervening period was the same as the treatment of the norms population. This assumption is basic to the use of the norm-referenced model for the assessment…

The authors have written this manual to aid workers in the Cooperative Extension Service of the United States to be better able to understand and apply the principles and methods of evaluation. The manual contains three sections which cover the nature and place of evaluation in extension work, the evaluation process, and the uses of evaluation…

The National Assessment is a plan for a systematic survey of knowledges, skills, understandings, and attitudes. The development of citizenship assessment described in this paper typifies the processes undergone for each subject--art, career and occupational development, citizenship, literature, mathematics, music, reading, science, social studies,…