This paper presents the authors' critique on "Clarifying the Consensus Definition of Validity" by Paul E. Newton (this issue). There are serious differences of opinion regarding the topic of validity. Newton is aware of these differences, as made clear by his choice of references and particularly his effort to respond to the various Borsboom…

Language testers operate within two frames of reference: norm-referenced (NRT) and criterion-referenced testing (CRT). The former underpins the world of large-scale standardized testing that prioritizes variability and comparison. The latter supports substantive score meaning in formative and domain specific assessment. Some claim that the…

This study's purpose was to determine whether or not the Literacy Coach Appraisal Instrument developed for use in evaluating literacy coaches had content validity. The study, a fully mixed concurrent equal status design conducted from a pragmatist philosophy, collected qualitative and quantitative data from literacy experts about the elements of…

This paper describes efforts to bring principled assessment design to a large-scale, high-stakes licensure examination by employing the frameworks of Assessment Engineering (AE), the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (RBT), and Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA). The Uniform CPA Examination is practice-oriented and focuses on the skills of accounting. In…

Honors education has grown exponentially across the country, and a great deal of variation currently exists among programs. The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) has adopted lists of the Basic Characteristics of Fully Developed Honors Programs (Madden, 1994) and Honors Colleges (Sederberg, 2005) to guide new and developing programs, but no…

This study investigated ways to improve the quality of music performance evaluation in an effort to address the accountability imperative in tertiary music education. An enhanced scientific methodology was employed incorporating ecological validity and using recognized qualitative methods involving grounded theory and quantitative methods…

Background: The newly formed discipline of engineering education is addressing the need to (a) enhance STEM education for precollege students and (b) identify optimum ways to introduce engineering content starting, perhaps, from the early ages. Introducing engineering at the Prekindergarten through 12th grade (PreK-12) education level requires…

This paper aims to develop a valid method to assess the key competencies of the exercise physiology profession acquired through work-integrated learning (WIL). In order to develop a competency-based assessment, the key professional tasks needed to be identified and the test designed so students' competency in different tasks and settings could be…

The purpose of this research was to develop the Caring School Leadership Questionnaire (CSLQ) as a valid and reliable instrument to measure the extent of care being given by school leaders (principals) to teachers. The research involved 1,041 teachers and 65 principals from 68 primary schools in the North-West Province of South Africa. The…

This article examines the Consortium on Reading Excellence-Phonics Survey (CORE-PS), an informal, inexpensive, and widely disseminated assessment tool that is used to determine primary-grade students' knowledge of and abilities to apply key alphabetic and phonics understandings to decode a mix of real and pseudo-words. Evidence is reported of the…

This study was the development of e-learning indicators used as an e-learning benchmarking model for higher education institutes. Specifically, it aimed to: 1) synthesize the e-learning indicators; 2) examine content validity by specialists; and 3) explore appropriateness of the e-learning indicators. Review of related literature included…

This paper describes the development and validation of an item bank designed for students to assess their own achievements across an undergraduate-degree programme in seven generic competences (i.e., problem-solving skills, critical-thinking skills, creative-thinking skills, ethical decision-making skills, effective communication skills, social…

The purpose of this study was to explore the variables that affect an individual's intention to use business intelligence technology in organizations. Constructs in the study were social influence, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and behavioral intention. Social influence refers to verbal comments from executives and coworkers that…

Purpose: A new measure of sportspersonship, which differentiates between compliance and principled approaches, was developed and initially validated in 3 studies. Method: Study 1 developed items, assessed content validity, and proposed a model. Study 2 tested the factorial validity of the model on an independent sample. Study 3 further tested the…

The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with sustainability of school-based interventions and the relative contributions of those factors to predicting sustained implementation of Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS). Participants were respondents from 217 schools across 14 U.S. states. Sustainability factors were…