Successful early mathematical development is vital to children's later education, employment, and wellbeing outcomes. However, established measurement tools are infrequently used to (i) assess children's mathematical skills and (ii) identify children with or at-risk of mathematical learning difficulties. In response, this pre-registered systematic…

This paper reports an investigation into the psychometric properties of the COR-Advantage1.5 (COR-Adv1.5) assessment tool, a criterion-referenced observation-based instrument designed to assess the developmental abilities of children from birth through kindergarten. Using data from 8534 children participating in a state-funded preschool program…

Much of the research that has examined the writing knowledge of school-age students has relied on interviews to ascertain this information, which is problematic because interviews may underestimate breadth and depth of writing knowledge, require lengthy interactions with participants, and do not permit a direct evaluation of a prescribed array of…

In this paper, the author aims to provide novice researchers with an understanding of the general problem of validity in social science research and to acquaint them with approaches to developing strong support for the validity of their research. She provides insight into these two important concepts, namely (1) validity; and (2) reliability, and…

This study examined whether there is evidence in Hong Kong and Taiwan students' early attitudes to civic participation that suggests they will adopt radical forms of civic participation and whether civic participatory potential of students from these two Chinese societies differed in early adolescence. To achieve these purposes, we used a Rasch…

This work asks one simple question: "how reliable is the method used by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) to estimate projected rates of VET program completion?" In other words, how well do early projections align with actual completion rates some years later? Completion rates are simple to calculate with a…

Measurement invariance (MI) is a property of measurement that is often implicitly assumed, but in many cases, not tested. When the assumption of MI is tested, it generally involves determining if the measurement holds longitudinally or cross-culturally. A growing literature shows that other groupings can, and should, be considered as well.…

Using a framework previously applied to other areas of media literacy, this study developed and assessed a measurement scale focused specifically on critical news media literacy. Our scale appears to successfully measure news media literacy as we have conceptualized it based on previous research, demonstrated through assessments of content,…

This study analyzed the reliability and validity of an indirect measure of clarity of feelings that is based on response latencies (RTs) of mood ratings. Fifty-two participants completed a laboratory session and an experience-sampling week with 6 measurement occasions per day. Shorter RT of mood ratings measured in the laboratory (but not…

This article reports the findings of a survey administering the personal well-being index (PWI) in six Chinese cities (N = 3,390) to ascertain the personal well-being of China's urban population. The specific aims of the study were: (a) ascertain whether Chinese urban residents are satisfied with their lives; (b) validate the PWI using an urban…

In most selection validation research, only the upper and lower tails of the criterion distribution are used, often yielding misleading or incorrect results. Provides formulas and tables which enable the researcher to account more accurately for the distribution of criterion within the middle range of population. (Author/RW)

This study examined the comparability and predictive validity of three approaches to measurement of child or adolescent maltreatment, involving the adolescents themselves (n=160), case file review by researchers, and protection agency social workers. Comparison of ratings across sources indicated considerable disagreement with respect to judgments…

Presents the Relationship Events Scale, a measure of courtship progress, which consists of 19 items marking the occurrence of specific events in dating relationships, grouped in six levels to form a Guttman scale. The reliability and validity of the scale was demonstrated by concordance of scores of 55 couples. (JAC)

The use of analysis of covariance in conjunction with the multivariate approach to analyzing repeated measures designs is considered for designs involving between- and within-subject factors, one dependent variable, and one observation per subject on the covariate. (Author/RL)

Quality of performance data yielded by subjective judgment is of major concern to researchers in performance appraisal. However, some confusion exists in the analysis of quality on ratings obtained from different rating scale formats and from different raters. To clarify this confusion, a study was conducted to assess the quality of judgmental…