A high percentage of young people (16-24 years of age) lack essential skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic needed to become workers and citizens. The teaching of reading should be of importance to all educators, not just language arts teachers. (JOW)

The facility index of a test item is the percentage of testees choosing the correct response. A common curriculum model presents process and content as two dimensions of the difficulty of an educational task. Wheeler suggested a third dimension: precision. This three-dimensional model is applied to chemistry education. (BW)

Three-dimensional random polygon objects ranging in complexity between four and 40 turns were presented to the Ss, and time spent in exploration and play was measured over three successive exposure-time blocks. (Author/DLS)

The development of two structural principles, hierarchical complexity and interruption, was examined in a new domain: two-dimensional pictures. Subjects were 60 4-to 5 1/2-year-old children. (Author/MP)

Outlines three types of diagnosis (formal, informal, and inferential) and three areas of diagnosis (difficulty of content, learning style, and use of principles of learning). Discusses considerations and sources of data for each of the three areas. (SS)

A theory and a procedure are presented for estimating a domain parameter and item parameters for test items in a homogeneous domain, such that the combined domain and item parameters account for observed proportions right for each item in a test. (CTM)

The study examines one aspect of the relationship between decoding and comprehension--that between word difficulty, decoding ability, and access of single-word meanings. Results indicate that decoding ease and extraction of word meanings are related and suggest that decoding ability must be considered a factor in reading comprehension. (RC)

Investigates how performance on syntactic structures is affected by the complexity of the surrounding sentence. To investigate possible relationships, two classifications of syntactic structures were tested in both simple and complex sentences. (RC)

The difficulty of four binary conceptual rules (conjunctive, disjunctive, conditional, and biconditional) was assessed using the rule-learning paradigm in a variety of stimulus populations. (Editor)

Logical estimates of item difficulty made by judges were compared to empirical estimates derived from a test administration. Results indicated substantial correspondence between logical and empirical estimates, and substantial variation among judges. Further, the more elaborate the system used by judges to make estimates, the more accurate the…

Item level differences between a type of constructed response item (figural response) and comparable multiple choice items in the domain of architecture were studied. Data from 120 architects and architecture students show that item level differences in difficulty correspond to differences in cognitive processing requirements and that relations…

Clause, syllable, and response latency characteristics of conversational utterances were assessed in 14 boys who stuttered and 14 normally fluent boys. Findings suggest that changes in the number of clausal constituents that must be constructed, stored, or coordinated within an utterance may influence the likelihood of speech errors and, hence,…

States that when a college or graduate school toughens its curriculum, entry requirements, or graduation requirements, two opposite effects on enrollment occur: (1) students know more and command higher salaries which enhances enrollment and (2) the pool of eligible students diminishes which has a negative effect on enrollment. (JEH)

An alternative method for scoring adaptive tests, based on number-correct scores, is explored and compared with a method that relies more directly on item response theory. Using the number-correct score with necessary adjustment for intentional differences in adaptive test difficulty is a statistically viable scoring method. (SLD)