Alternatives to the standard statewide assessment often are necessary for valid measurement of students with significant disabilities. These alternate assessments must be carefully developed and evaluated with respect to generally accepted psychometric standards. Ideally, these measures should be sensitive to growth and scaled to state tests that…

It is important for the teacher to choose effective software for students. It is also important for designers to know what features of educational software make it effective. But the results of studies dealing with the effectiveness of educational software are contradictory. One reason for such results might be the fact that meta-analysis covers…

Bounds are established for log cross-product ratios (log odds ratios) involving pairs of items for item response models. First, expressions for bounds on log cross-product ratios are provided for unidimensional item response models in general. Then, explicit bounds are obtained for the Rasch model and the two-parameter logistic (2PL) model.…

Structural equation modeling allows several methods of estimating the disattenuated association between 2 or more latent variables (i.e., the measurement model). In one common approach, measurement models are specified using item parcels as indicators of latent constructs. Item parcels versus original items are often used as indicators in these…

Two studies of 5-month-old infants explored whether a phenomenon reported by K. Wynn (1992) reflects a familiarity preference instead of a mathematical competence. Experiment 1 was a conceptual replication of Wynn's study. When data were analyzed with the relatively liberal statistical approach used by Wynn, the original phenomenon was replicated.…

The standardization data for the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II; D. C. Delis, J. H. Kramer, E. Kaplan, & B. A. Ober, 2000) were used to evaluate the base rate of 6 specific discrepancies between various key variables. The results indicated that CVLT-II performance discrepancies should equal or exceed 1 or 1.5 z score…

A scaling procedure has been developed for ordering binary parallelogram preference data. The procedure uses minimum variance of the item ranks averaged across persons as the optimization criterion. Two seriation strategies are employed. One is pairwise interchange. The second joins together the vector end points and breaks this circle between…

An analysis of variance approach to estimating reliability is examined. This approach uses an internal-consistency index for estimating the reliability of survey instruments containing ranked items, and is recommended when the relative ranking of item means is of interest to survey researchers. The computation of this index is demonstrated using…

Various item selection techniques are compared on criterion-referenced reliability and validity. Techniques compared include three nominal criterion-referenced methods, a traditional point biserial selection, teacher selection, and random selection. (Author)

A scale was developed to measure attitude toward school among elementary school pupils. Scores on the questionnaire were positively correlated with teacher ratings of school attitudes, non-verbal ability, standardized tests of school achievement and self-concept scores for a sample of fourth grade pupils. (Author)

Discusses study involving parcels of homegenous items as opposed to item factoring. (SDH)

A model of test item dependency is presented and used to illustrate the effect that violations of local independence have on the behavior of item characteristic curves. The dependency model is flexible enough to simulate the interaction of a number of factors including item difficulty and item discrimination, varying degrees of item dependence,…

A new indicator of item difficulty, which identifies effectiveness ranges, overcomes the limitations of other item difficulty indexes in describing the difficulty of an item or a test as a whole and in aiding the selection of appropriate ability level items for a test. There are three common uses of the term "item difficulty": (1) the probability…

A common problem in practical educational research is that of perfect scores which result when latent trait models are used. A simple procedure for managing the perfect and zero response problem encountered in converting test scores into measures is presented. It allows the test user to chose among two or three reasonable finite representations of…

Factor structure underlying responses to the 373-item MMPI was found to be essentially identical to the factor structure previously defined from analysis of intercorrelations among the first 168 items. (Author)