This book addresses the question of what tests are measures of. Intelligence, achievement, and personality tests not based on empirical investigation have questionable validity. Some researchers now suspect that almost all tests given to students in all subjects, as well as general tests of intelligence and personality, are essentially language…

A paired-comparisons measure of distributive justice development, the Distributive Justice Scale (DJS), was developed and validated in four studies. Pictures were drawn to represent the different stages of distributive justice for a given dilemma and the DJS was scored by selecting the child's preferred stage via the picture comparisons for each…

In a discussion of the value of standardized tests and their implications for effective teaching, the author contends that such tests are useful in keeping those concerned with the learning process focused on the main target. In addition, standardized tests serve to (1) reveal variations in the effectiveness of different instructional procedures…

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…

This guide begins with a series of questions and answers which introduce Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment (EQA) Inventory as a 188-to 190-item multiple choice test for fifth, eighth, and eleventh grades. Items are selected from a 400-item bank using matrix sampling procedures. Test results are analyzed at the school level; no…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 30 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: use of short and long passages in informal reading inventories, components in decoding spelling patterns, the psycholinguistic analysis of oral reading miscues and…

FOUR INSTRUMENTS WERE DEVELOPED AND STANDARDIZED TO MEASURE EARLY EXPERIENCE, CURRENT BEHAVIOR, TREATMENT APPROACHES, AND PROGNOSIS OF EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED CHILDREN--THE RATING/RANKING SCALE OF CHILD BEHAVIOR (R/R SCALE), THE PARENT PRACTICES INVENTORY (PPI), THE SCALE ON PROCEDURES IN DEALING WITH CHILDREN (PDC), AND THE CHILD HISTORY CODE…

The relationship between the difficulty with which the retarded adolescent decodes visual social cues and the appropriateness of his social behavior was the basis of a study to determine whether social cue decoding could be taught the retarded in a manner analogous to the teaching of reading and writing, with beneficial behavioral results. The…

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,…

This paper questions the purpose of testing in second language instruction. Comments are based on an examination of tests used by the Defense Language Institute for students of English as a second language. Two kinds of tests are used: the English Comprehension Level (ECL), used primarily as a basis for setting exit requirements, and "Book…

The methods and procedures of education in our schools must be reexamined according to the writers who have contributed to this document. This is most strongly felt in the areas of testing and evaluation for it is these areas that may have the greatest impact on a child's educational career. This document is presented in three sections: (1) An…

A 3-year study was conducted to validate the eight-factor Vocational Capacity Scale (VCS), designed for use with the retarded. Subjects were 366 institutionalized mental retardates, both educable and trainable, aged 15 to 30, who were administered the VCS twice, 1 year apart. Social workers and staff worked individually to promote the highest…

The literature on issues of the reliability and validity of objective and performance assessments in vocational education and training was reviewed and synthesized to develop guidelines for procedures to enhance reliability and validity. The review established the following facts: (1) validity is determined largely through inferences made by both…

This article describes the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition, an assessment designed to test preschool children in vocabulary acquisition, screen both for giftedness and mental retardation, and measure English language proficiency in individuals for whom English is not a primary language. Its administration, standardization,…