The authors examine existing procedures and instruments used to assess the motor and perceptual/motor skills of severely/multiply handicapped infants and young children. Following an introductory section is a discussion of the rationale for the sequencing of assessment items and the limitations of the instruments for yielding specific quantitative…

Despite research conducted on the testing of minorities, little attention has been given to the issue of the race and training of the test administrator, i.e., the psychometrist or school psychologist. Black children in the present educational system are most often faced with examiners who are culturally, socially, and economically different from…

The scoring scheme of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is studied, as well as techniques for estimating its reliability. NAEP data are collected on students of age 13 in the fall, age 9 in the winter, and age 17 in the spring. The scoring task, involving hand scoring of open-ended items, may vary between 25,000 responses to…

This study examined the effects of pretraining Chicano and non-Chicano seventh-grade students using items parallel to those appearing on tests. The sample was 44% Chicano and 56% non-Chicano. Prior to instruction on factors and primes, all seventh-grade students in a school were given an Arithmetic Reasoning Test and a Missing Words Test as…

The cautions needed for correctly interpreting grade equivalent scores are presented simply, for persons who are not statisticians. Four potential limitations of grade equivalent scores are summarized. (1) Comparisons across grades are of little value when the subject content is not the same; for example, sixth grade American history is not…

People often perform poorly on tasks following experience with unsolvable problems. Two competing explanations for this performance deficit (learned helplessness and egotism) were tested. Subjects were given either solvable or unsolvable discrimination problems and then a series of anagrams which were alleged to be either highly or moderately…

A non-aversive modification of Bekesy Audiometric Procedures (BAP) used in assessing hearing ability has been found to produce interpretable audiograms from children whose responses to the unmodified BAP were erratic and uninterpretable. In an experiment with six 8-year-old children, three subjects were assigned to a condition in which a light cue…

Two studies investigated examiner scoring agreement on the Oral Vocabulary, Draw-A-Design, and Draw-A-Child subtests of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. In study one, ten examiners scored four randomly selected normal children's protocols. Unanimous agreement occurred on scores for 52% of the Oral Vocabulary responses, 39% of the…

A national sample of 3,300 elementary and secondary school teachers, who had recently administered the Metropolitan Achievement Tests in their classrooms, responded to a questionnaire concerning various standardized achievement test issues. Teachers gave their opinion on: the amount of such testing in their schools; personal use of test results;…

Reviews of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (N-D) for college students indicate that the test may not be appropriate for all college students. Although the N-D is easy to administer and score, some of its traits make it questionable for use in evaluating open admissions students: it is timed; it measures vocabulary, rate, and comprehension in a mere…

The purpose of this study was to further examine the reliability of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), a new instrument to measure hearing vocabulary so that a student's verbal intelligence may be inferred. A group testing procedure was utilized by reproducing the PPVT plates on 35 millimeter transparent slides and projecting them onto a…

The concepts of cognitive development and objectivity are explored preparatory to a discussion of a suitable theory of development to be used as the foundation for developmentally-based standardized tests. It is hypothesized that Piagetian theory is the most appropriate basis for such tests and two possible approaches for constructing…

Because criterion referenced measurement is a relatively new approach to testing, systematic guidelines for constructing criterion referenced tests (CRTs) have not yet been developed. A number of questions and issues face the test developer who wishes to provide a test that will be helpful in a particular decision-making situation. There are three…

The way in which diagnostic reading test scores were used in planning a remedial program is examined in this report. Among the topics discussed are the administration of a diagnostic test in 13 Irish schools; the organization of a remedial program for students identified as having severe reading problems; weaknesses of diagnostic tests currently…

Examined are several tests designed to measure language development in retarded children and possible options for research. Past attempts (such as Berko's Test of Morphology) to evaluate retarded children's linguistic development are criticized for inadequate language definitions and invalid testing methods. Suggestions for data-gathering options…