Factor analysis of the instrument used to evaluate student perceptions of an educational interactive video program has determined that seven constructs were being measured. All of these constructs, however, were not consistently measuring the same things. In fact, the variables on which the factors loaded changed for three of the factors from…

Due to concern for test security and fairness, three new performance-based English placement test writing prompts were developed in a large midwestern university for incoming students of English as a second language, and the degree of prompt variability was investigated from multiple perspectives, including "fit-to-specification,"…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

Little information exists as to the efficacy of using the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) as a predictor of success for nontraditional students' graduate studies. Since many students in doctoral education programs are nontraditional matriculants, an investigation of the relationship between GRE scores and student success in one such program is…

This study developed an instrument for the assessment of career-related barriers in a Chinese culture. A pilot version of the Chinese Career Barriers Inventory (CCBI) consisting of 95 items was tested with 403 college students in Taiwan. After item and factor analyses, the CCBI was reduced to 80 items comprising 12 scales. Reliability coefficients…

The importance of dynamic testing procedures for understanding reasoning and its underlying cognitive processes as well as for increasing validity is investigated. An experiment tested the premise that African American and White college students demonstrate equivalent inductive reasoning ability when tested under induced mediation procedures,…

Basic precepts for test development are described and explained as they are presented in measurement textbooks commonly used in the fields of education and psychology. The five building blocks discussed as the foundation of well-constructed tests are: (1) specification of purpose; (2) standard conditions; (3) consistency; (4) validity; and (5)…

This study investigated the validity of measures derived from a large-scale multiple-choice achievement test in mathematics, using evidence from introspective think-aloud protocols of students as they attempted test items. A small-scale study of 21 local high-school students was conducted to identify and describe cognitive processes underlying…

Two of the most popular assessment instruments for measuring college student educational outcomes are the College Outcome Measures Program (COMP) of the American College Testing Program (1987) and the Academic Profile of the Educational Testing Service (ETS). Characteristics of these tests were compared, and the sensitivity of each test to…

Divorce is common phenomenon in the lives of many persons today. It changes the structure of the family and, in so doing, changes the lives of the couples involved and presents the children of divorce with their own set of adjustment issues. This study examined the literature on children's overall adjustment to divorce. Subjects (N=102) were…

At present, states have no consistent manner in which limited-English-proficient (LEP) students are assessed on statewide or district-level minimum competency examinations. In some states, LEP students need to take the same minimum competency examinations under the same rules as other students to graduate or be promoted. Competency tests have the…

A case study documented the emergence of literacy in an extremely precocious reader between the ages of 2 years, 7 months and 3 years, 2 months. The case study examined the relation between the subject's oral language and reading development; the bases of his word identification; the relation between his reading and writing development; and…

A study was undertaken to develop a partial credit scheme for scoring cloze-type questions on an English collocation test, obtain construct validity evidence for the test and the scoring scheme using the Rasch Partial Credit Model, and compare partial credit scoring with the more commonly used dichotomous scoring with the same test instrument.…

This content assessment project is designed to determine what social studies content should be tested on national standardized tests and how that content should be defined. Sixteen historians, political scientists, and social studies educators were interviewed to identify key concepts. In a second phase, the cultural literacy rationale for content…

A study of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was conducted to: (1) test for the factorial validity of the French version of the BDI (BDI-FR) separately for 551 non-clinical Francophone adolescent males and 601 non-clinical Francophone adolescent females; (2) cross-validate findings across a second independent sample for each sex; and (3) test…