The traditional kappa statistic in assessing interrater agreement is not adequate when multiraters and multiattributes are involved. In this article, latent trait models are proposed to assess the multirater multiattribute (MRMA) agreement. Data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) are used to illustrate the…

"Code status" is a prominent feature of end-of-life discussions in U.S. hospitals. This essay analyzes how the rhetoric of code status articulates the terms of end-of-life decision-making in one hospital's "Patient" Preferences Worksheet. The Worksheet signifies the abandonment of the technological fix as the preferred…

The term "conceptual simulation" refers to a type of everyday reasoning strategy commonly called "what if" reasoning. It has been suggested in a number of contexts that this type of reasoning plays an important role in scientific discovery; however, little "direct" evidence exists to support this claim. This article proposes that conceptual…

The correlation between the communicative intent of parents, in terms of their expectation of a response and the response patterns of young children aged 23-25 months during parent-child interactions, was investigated. An Observational Framework was used to code these parameters in interactions between 36 children and their mothers. The children…

Competence-based approaches are frequently adopted as the key paradigm in both formal or non-formal education and training. To support the provision of competence-based learning services, it is necessary to be able to maintain a record of an individual's competences in a persistent and standard way. In this paper, we investigate potential issues…

In actual test development practice, the number of test items that must be developed and pretested is typically greater, and sometimes much greater, than the number eventually judged suitable for use in operational test forms. This has proven to be especially true for analytical reasoning items, which currently form the bulk of the analytical…

Content analysis was used to examine the consistency of responses in self-report data obtained by a semi-structured conversational interview. It was hypothesized that a majority of the seemingly inconsistent responses would prove to be consistent when seen from the respondents' points of view. The sample consisted of 215 female homicide offenders…

In education and the social sciences, problems of interest to researchers and users of research often involve variables that do not meet the assumptions of regression in the area of an equal interval scale relative to a zero point. Various coding schemes exist that allow the use of regression while still answering the researcher's questions of…

Students who learn mathematics with CAS calculators are likely to develop new practices for doing and recording mathematics. Students discussed in this paper were able to use CAS calculators in examinations, making their own decisions about what to document as written records for solutions to problems. A comparison of some features of written…

The Microsoft Certification Program (MCP) includes many new computer-based item types, based on complex cases involving the Windows 2000 (registered) operating system. This Innovative Item Technology (IIT) has presented challenges beyond traditional psychometric considerations such as capturing and storing the relevant response data from…

This codebook contains the layout and descriptive information for survey and sampling variables for the public-use version of the 1993-94 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). Information in this volume allows the user to access the data file. This volume opens with a discussion of created variables and some user notes. Four appendixes contain the…

The usefulness of the curriculum vita (CV) as a data source for examining the career paths of scientists and engineers was studied. CVs were obtained in response to an e-mail message sent to researchers working in the area of biotechnology who were funded by the National Science Foundation (55 responses) or listed as authors (industry only) in the…

A survey of 26 Rorschach experts and 19 students of Rorschach use was conducted to help students using the Exner Comprehensive System determine whether to code movement for nouns with definitions that include movement. Experts and students did not reach agreement, but a literature review suggests such nouns should often be coded as movement. (SLD)

Investigates the cognitive and linguistic demands of learning algebra and explores students' understanding of algebraic notation. Findings indicate specific origins of misinterpretation that include intuitive assumptions and pragmatic reasoning about a new notation, analogies with familiar symbol systems, interference from new learning in…

A. S. Kaufman (1994) recommended that clinicians substitute Symbol Search, a new subtest, for the Coding subtest when calculating Performance and Full Scale IQs on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III. Tables are provided for accurate derivation of IQs, percentile ranks, and confidence intervals when this substitution is made. (SLD)