The goal of teaching philosophy is to develop philosophically literate students and to ensure that students develop philosophical literacy by design and not by chance. Perhaps the best method for teaching philosophy to beginning students is the public model, in which the practice of defending positions in the public arena forces students to become…

The results of a small research project that studied the effect computer administration has on student performance for writing or essay tests are presented. The introduction of computer-administered tests has raised concern about the equivalence of scores generated by computer versus paper-and-pencil test versions. For this study a sample of…

A reliability analysis was conducted of an abbreviated, 10-item version of the Pupil Control Ideology Form (PCI), using the Cronbach's alpha technique (L. J. Cronbach, 1951) and the computation of the standard error of measurement. The PCI measures a teacher's orientation toward pupil control. Subjects were 168 preservice teachers from one private…

A culturally-based approach to learning adopted by many Japanese students is hypothesized, and it is proposed that while it is effective in many areas of learning, it may hinder second language learning. Japan's politico-economic structures, geared toward efficiently manufacturing competent workers, encourages a psychology of procedure that tends…

The predictive power of the Split-Half version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised (WISC-R) Object Assembly (OA) subtest was compared to that of the full administration of the OA subtest. A cohort of 218 male and 49 female adolescent offenders detained in a Texas juvenile detention facility between 1990 and 1992 was used. The…

The research project reported in this paper had two aims: to demonstrate what standard multiple-choice questions and two new varieties (multiple-choice cloze and guided summary test and to assess whether the new formats test the same skills. To find out what the various question formats test, the study looked at a battery of tests, each of which…

This study explored the use of multiple-choice item formats and performance formats for assessment of learning science at the second grade level. It was completed during a 2-week unit entitled "Living Systems" that addressed Virginia Standards of Learning for second grade science. A 7-day unit was designed and both multiple-choice and…

This study examined major characteristics of instruments commonly used in statewide teacher certification procedures and the possible relations of these characteristics to the uneven success rate among minority teaching candidates. The study analyzed raw scores and selected variables associated with 63 white female candidates who took the Georgia…

Constructed-response formats are desired for measuring complex and dynamic response processes that require the examinee to understand the structures of problems and micro-level cognitive tasks. These micro-level tasks and their organized structures are usually unobservable. This study shows that elementary graph theory is useful for organizing…

A part-form methodology was used to study the effect of varying degrees of multidimensionality on the consistency of pass/fail classification decisions obtained from simulated unidimensional item response theory (IRT) based licensure examinations. A control on the degree of form multidimensionality permitted an assessment throughout the range of…

The development of the student destination survey instrument was a response to an identified need for a tool to measure the effectiveness of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) programs in Australia. The requirement was for a tool that was flexible in accommodating changing course structures and consistent across state and territory boundaries.…

In this paper a quadratic curve equating method for different test forms under a random-group data-collection design is proposed. Procedures for implementing this method and related issues are described and discussed. The quadratic-curve method was evaluated with real test data (from two 30-item subtests for a professional licensure examination…

This paper reports on a study conducted to determine if comparisons between scores on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the International English Language Testing Service (IELTS) are justifiable. The test scores of 216 Iranian graduate students who took the TOEFL and IELTS, as well as the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Higher…

The aims of the present study were threefold: (1) to test for the equivalency of an hierarchical three-factor structure of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) across English and French versions for non-clinical adolescents; (2) given evidence of poor model fit, to validate the factorial structure of the BDI French version across three independent…

A commonly accepted rule for developing equated examinations using the common-items non-equivalent groups (CINEG) design is that items common to the two examinations being equated should be identical. The CINEG design calls for two groups of examinees to respond to a set of common items that is included in two examinations. In practice, this rule…