Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examination in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this test on writing contains general instructions and three sections: (1) personal response to literature, which requires a response about an aspect of literature; (2) functional writing, which requires a written response within a given situation or…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examination in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this test on writing contains general instructions and three sections: (1) a personal response to literature, which requires a response about some aspect of literature; (2) functional writing, which requires a written response within a given situation…

The effects of humorous test questions on test performance of high and low-anxious college students was investigated. It was hypothesized that humor should reduce the anxiety level of high-anxious subjects, and thus improve their performance, while having little effect on low-anxious subjects. Students were assigned to a low or high-anxious group…

In order to look for evidence of possible racial bias in six of the Navy tests for the Enlisted Advancement System, statistical data for a group of black personnel were compared with data for a selected matching group of whites. The first step was to compute item difficulty indices (the percent passing each item) for the black group, for the…

This unit of instruction on home management of lighting was designed for use by home economics teachers in Florida high schools and by home economics extension agents as they work with their clientele. It is one of a series of 11 instructional units (see note) written to help teachers and agents to educate their students and clients about the…

Professional assessment of mental retardation (MR) and learning disabilities (LD) is crucial to the implementation of P.L. 94-142 because it necessarily precedes the employment of trained teachers and because a plan for remediation depends on accurate assessment. Intelligence is a key element in the identification of MR-LD, but competent, fair…

The secretarial skills collection is composed of 47 objectives and related test items designed for business education courses in grades 10 through 12. Objectives are organized into the following categories: (1) typing; (2) shorthand; (3) office machines; (4) office practice; and (5) business English and communication. Each objective contains three…

The technology of transforming sentences from prose instruction into test questions was examined by comparing two methods of selecting sentences (keyword vs. rare singleton), two types of question words (nouns vs. adjectives), and two foil construction methods (writer's choice vs. algorithmic). Four item writers created items using each…

To explain the discrepancy between median scores on the 1976 administration of the California Achievement Tests (CAT) and the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP) in the Austin Independent School District (AISD), ten technical variables typical of achievement tests were considered as explanations. (1) The STEP may measure different…

Item response data were obtained from large samples of students in Grades K-community college, taking the following tests: Stanford Early School Achievement Test, Stanford Achievement Test, Stanford Test of Academic Skills, Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test, and Stanford Diagnostic Mathematical Test. Data were classified as fitting or non-fitting…

The process of constructing a test to assess geographic knowledge and understandings of fifth and sixth grade pupils is discussed. In addition, a draft of a test to measure geography skills and knowledge of physical and human geography is presented. The document is presented in three sections. In section I, information is presented on test…

The Pupil-Perceived Needs Assessment (PPNA) is designed to assist school personnel in collecting information on pupil attitudes, reactions, and feelings towards new and existing curricular and extracurricular programs or towards education in general, and to assess pupils' needs from the pupils' perspective. The package is not meant to be used as…

This study determined whether item forms ( rules for constructing items related to a domain or set of tasks) would enable naive item writers to generate multiple-choice items at three taxonomic levels--knowledge, comprehension, and application. Students wrote 120 multiple-choice items from 20 item forms, corresponding to educational objectives…

The effectiveness of a model for determining a minimal cut-off score for criterion-referenced tests was examined. The model, based upon techniques presented originally by Nedelsky and by Angoff, was first used in conjunction with a multiple choice test developed for use in certifying school counselors in Georgia. A "knowledge estimation panel" was…

Simulated tailored tests were used to investigate the relationships between characteristics of the item pool and the computer program, and the reliability and bias of the resulting ability estimates. The computer program was varied to provide for various step sizes (differences in difficulty between successive steps) and different acceptance…