Research on the graphical facilitation of probabilistic reasoning has been characterised by the effort expended to identify valid assessment tools. The authors developed an assessment instrument to compare reasoning performances when problems were presented in verbal-numerical and graphical-pictorial formats. A sample of undergraduate psychology…

Despite the numerous individual illustrations in the literature showing how the discrimination index may be used to identify items with faults, its overall effectiveness as a measure of item quality, defined in terms of the presence or absence of faults, is not clear. This study investigates its validity. (Author/RK)

In an analysis of multitrait-multimethod matrices the criteria for discriminant validity are shown to include a "structure" criterion as an invariance of traits structure to methods. The criterion is meant to fit data to an additive model with traits and methods but not interaction terms. The importance of the structure criterion and the…

Progress at NCHEMS is reported on a project to develop indicators of institutional financial condition for higher education institutions. Three steps followed: (1) to develop a framework to reflect dimensions of an institution's financial condition, (2) identification of indicators to measure change in dimensions, and (3) testing of indicators.…

This study demonstrates and discusses a new procedure for performing item analysis which utilizes multiple discriminant analysis to establish efficiently and effectively an index of item validity. Application of this statistical technique to data derived from an attitude survey of three groups of students enrolled in technical training courses…

This memorandum contains a response to an article in "Change" magazine by Andrew Lupton, John Augenblick, and Joseph Heyison, September 1976. The article presented the results of a study grouping a national sample of colleges and universities into categories according to their financial health. The author's reservations about the…