Peer assessment typically requires students to judge peers' work against assessment criteria. We tested an alternative approach in which students judged pairs of scripts against one another in the absence of assessment criteria. First year mathematics undergraduates (N?=?194) sat a written test on conceptual understanding of multivariable…

To investigate the claim that the Statistics Attitude Survey (SAS) contains a number of achievement-related items rather than attitude-related items, the SAS and the Attitudes Toward Statistics (ATS) were administered to 280 introductory statistics students. Results showed similarities between the tests. (Author/GDC)

Compared the responses of counseling center clients (N=100) to a measure of inventoried interests and a measure of expressed interests. Results found the five highest basic interests of the two measures were rather strongly related, but the relationships between the five highest occupational scales were less clearly related. (Author)

The two studies reported examined the validity of several Evaluation/Survey Service (ESS) surveys for accurately reflecting changes in students' perceptions resulting from changes made by an institution in its policies, programs, services, or environment. In study 1, personnel from nine postsecondary institutions identified items on various ESS…

The development and validation of a shortened and revised version of the Belief in Personal Control Scale (BPCS-RS) are described. Like the original 85-item version of the BPCS, the BPCS-RS measures three empirically derived factors (a belief in general external control of outcomes, an exaggerated belief in personal control of outcomes, and a…

The results obtained by three test administration modes were examined with a focus upon systematic bias due to lack of standardization of test administration procedures. The My Class Inventory was administered to ninety classrooms of fifth grade students in a large suburban school district. The 45 items on the inventory are distributed over five…

School achievement attributions for success and failure were examined for American and Polish preadolescents between the ages of 12 and 13 years. The American sample included 115 preadolescents (53 males and 62 females), and the Polish sample included 64 children (34 males and 30 females). The American subjects came from a suburban racially…

Describes a study of the development of a new oral proficiency test which could replace the existing English as a Foreign Language Oral Matriculation test in Israel. The deficiencies of the existing Oral Matriculation test are specified, and the components of the experimental test are described. (Author/SED)

The Defining Issues Test (DIT) has been subjected to construct validation in a number of studies relating it to the development of moral judgment and to measures of cognitive development and political attitudes. The DIT has been found to have significant positive correlations with the Comprehension of Social-Moral Concepts Test for a variety of…

How students perceive standardized tests and routine classroom tests on subject matter units was studied by surveying 61 fifth-grade and 65 eighth-grade students in public schools in Michigan. It was hypothesized that older students would more often distinguish between the types of test and would be more cynical and less motivated than would…