The controversy on the importance of children's attitudes toward their educational experiences has focused on two major questions: First, are attitudes an appropriate concern for educational systems; and second, are attitudes important as correlates of critical educational behaviors or simply as ends in themselves? This study attempted to add some…

The main hypothesis was that the unit is appropriate for use at the kindergarten level. The evaluation was based upon the examination of four factors: 1) the reliability and item characteristics of the unit text; 2) the effect of bias associated with pupil sex, race, socio-economic status on geography achievement and learning gains; 3) the effect…

The effectiveness of the elementary level guidance program, Developing Understanding of Self and Others (DUSO), is assessed. Intended for use by counselors of children ages 5-8, the DUSO program is designed to help children understand social-emotional behavior through listening, inquiry, discussion, and role play. The DUSO Affectivity Device,…

The Course Entry Inventory was developed to assess the affective characteristics of college students when they enter a course. The four dimensions measured were: affective characteristics upon entry, willingness to undertake course activities and accept instruction, perceived importance of the course, and self-reported level of apprehension about…

An attitude rating scale and instructional assessment survey were administered in 62 classes at the State University of New York at Cortland to examine the relationship between student ratings of instruction and students' course-oriented attitudes. The Adjective Rating Scale (ARS) was designed to measure course and program-oriented attitudes, and…

Structural integrity of a measure is defined in terms of its replicability, constancy, invariance, and stability. Work completed in the development and validation of the Self Observation Scales (SOS) Primary Level (Stenner and Katzenmeyer, 1973) serves to illustrate one method of establishing structural integrity. The name of each scale of the SOS…

This report describes the development and validation of the Unisex ACT Interest Inventory (UNIACT). In contrast to other interest inventories in common use, the UNIACT contains scales on which males and females receive similar scores. In the development of the UNIACT, more than 200 potentially sex-balanced items were administered to 10,211 people,…

A central problem for the user of domain-referenced tests in instruction is deciding who has passed and who has failed. Two procedures were presented and discussed. The first, employing classical test theory, was found to be more useful for larger domains and where the passing standard is 70 percent or less. The sampling procedure suggested by…

The use of videotape tests is presented. Such tests enable the educator to assess student performance more directly than traditional paper and pencil tests. Test 1 was exploratory. Test 2 was designed to measure empathetic understanding. It contains 16 scenes, each about one minute long, which show five individuals in a group situation. The…

Investigations into item bias provide an empirical basis for the identification and elimination of test items which appear to measure different traits across populations or cultural groups. The Psychometric rationales for six approaches to the identification of biased test items are reviewed: (1) Transformed item difficulties: within-group…

This material provides a discussion of the construction and analysis of tests prepared for classroom use by teachers. The initial discussion is concerned with the purposes of evaluation and the specification of objectives. This is followed by an examination of theoretical and practical considerations in planning a test. The material on test item…

A procedure is demonstrated for constructing tables showing, for each score on a commercial reading achievement test, the percentage of real-world materials that the testee is likely to comprehend with at least a criterion level of proficiency, the percentages of students in a local or national sample who can competently comprehend a given…

This partially annotated bibliography of journal articles, dissertations, convention papers, research reports, and a few books and unpublished manuscripts provides a comprehensive coverage of work on latent trait theory and practice. Documents are arranged alphabetically by author. The period covered ranges from the early 1950's to the present.…

The Bilingual Education Evaluation System was developed to help local bilingual education projects overcome evaluation obstacles and design sound, useful evaluations within the constraints of available funding and with responsiveness to current federal legislation and regulations. The evaluation system proposed involves a process component, an…

The Preschool Preposition Test (PPT), a receptive language test for children ages 3 to 5, is a brief simple gross developmental screening instrument still in research status. For 985 normal subjects the test shows a significant correlation of scores with age. Significant correlations have been obtained between PPT scores and raw scores on the…