Thirty middle- to upper middle-class monolingual Dutch speaking families consisting of at least a mother and a father completed the Infant Form "Words and Gestures" of the Dutch adaptation of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for the same child at 1;1. Considerable inter- and intrafamily variation emerged in how two (or three)…

The lack of valid, research-based methods to identify potential artistic talent hampers the inclusion of the arts in programs for the gifted and talented. The Talent Assessment Process in Dance, Music, and Theater (D/M/T TAP) was designed to identify potential performing arts talent in diverse populations, including bilingual and special education…

This study gathered information regarding professional military educators' perceptions of the concept of critical thinking to determine whether there was a common definition and a shared meaning of the concept among them. Although there did not appear to be a common definition of critical thinking among this group, 10 categories and four themes…

In many countries, an athlete's performance at sporting competitions is often used as part of the selection criteria for entry into college. These criteria could be biased depending upon the procedures utilized by the authorities in a particular country. The purpose of this study was to calibrate, by using the Rasch rating scale model, the…

The objectives of this study were: (1) to examine the psychometric properties of the Assessment of Life Habits (LIFE-H) for children; and (2) to draw a profile of the level of participation among children of 5 to 13 years of age with various impairments. The research team adapted the adult version of the LIFE-H in order to render it more…

The analysis of the process of collaboration is a central topic in current CSCL research. However, defining process characteristics relevant for collaboration quality and developing instruments capable of assessing these characteristics are no trivial tasks. In the assessment method presented in this paper, nine qualitatively defined dimensions of…

The "Social-Communication Assessment Tool" (S-CAT) was created as a direct observation instrument to quantify specific social and communication deficits of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) within educational settings. In this pilot study, the instrument's content validity and interrater reliability were investigated to determine the…

Although protocol analysis can be an important tool for researchers to investigate the process of collaboration and communication, the use of this method of analysis can be time consuming. Hence, an automatic coding procedure for coding dialogue acts was developed. This procedure helps to determine the communicative function of messages in online…

The FACETS equating model meets the complex requirements for equating writing performance assessment across both raters and prompts. This study is based on an equating of the 1996 writing performance assessment in the Minneapolis Public Schools (Minnesota). Raters and prompts were equated simultaneously using the FACETS model. About 3,000 fifth…

This study illustrates the use of three least-squares models to control for rater effects in performance evaluation: (1) ordinary least squares (OLS); (2) weighted least squares (WLS); and (3) OLS subsequent to applying a logistic transformation to observed ratings (LOG-OLS). The three models were applied to ratings obtained from four…

A measurement approach called generalizability theory (G-theory) is an important alternative to the more familiar classical measurement theory that yields less useful coefficients such as alpha or the KR-20 coefficient. G-theory is a theory about the dependability of behavioral measurements that allows the simultaneous estimation of multiple…

This paper outlines the development of a performance assessment measure of language speaking ability, the Language Ability Assessment System (LAAS), which is highly reliable and can be examined for reliability through modern measurement theories, such as generalizability theory (G-theory) and the many-facet Rasch theory. LAAS was developed to…

Since 1986, the Teacher Assessment Project (TAP) at Stanford University (California) has been exploring performance-based modes of assessment that capture the complexity of the practice of teaching. After a brief description of the rating procedures, the raters, and the situated-performances designed by the TAP for assessment, this paper describes…

The interrater reliability and factor structure of colleague ratings of university faculty were studied for 46 faculty members from 4 departments within the School of Education and Allied Professions at the University of Miami (Florida). Within each department, each faculty member rated every other faculty member using two methods: (1) a global…

A study of the reliability of the proficiency ratings scale and techniques used by three federal government agencies--the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Language Institute, and the Foreign Service Institute (FSI)--to test employees' oral language proficiency in French and German had two randomly selected two-person teams of testers from…