Across the country, school districts are increasingly seeking out privately contracted psychologists to conduct psychological evaluations. As such, it is increasingly important that psychological reports adhere to best practices and are written to ensure comprehension by both parents and teachers. This study explored the potential differences…

In his focus article, "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation," published in this issue of "Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives," Andrew Maul introduces and discusses several foundational issues and concludes that self-report measures may be particularly difficult to validate and may fall short…

Determining eligibility for the special education category Emotional Disturbance (ED) is a challenging task. The difficulty in identifying students with ED is due, in part, to problematic federal criteria (Olympia et al., 2004; Skiba, Grizzle, & Minke, 1994). Unchanges since 1975, these criteria have created an environment in which…

Recent research in multidimensional item response theory has introduced within-item interaction effects between latent dimensions in the prediction of item responses. The objective of this study was to extend this research to bifactor models to include an interaction effect between the general and specific latent variables measured by an item.…

Response-time models are of increasing interest in educational and psychological testing. This article focuses on the lognormal model for response times, which is one of the most popular response-time models, and suggests a simple person-fit statistic for the model. The distribution of the statistic under the null hypothesis of no misfit is proved…

Response-time models are of increasing interest in educational and psychological testing. This paper focuses on the lognormal model for response times (van der Linden, 2006), which is one of the most popular response-time models, and suggests a simple person-fit statistic for the model. The distribution of the statistic under the null hypothesis…

This study presents new models for item response functions (IRFs) in the framework of the D-scoring method (DSM) that is gaining attention in the field of educational and psychological measurement and largescale assessments. In a previous work on DSM, the IRFs of binary items were estimated using a logistic regression model (LRM). However, the LRM…

In Andrew Maul's focus paper "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation'" published in this issue of "Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives," Maul contends that self-report measures may be particularly difficult to validate. He cautions that such techniques may fall short of providing the kinds of…

Quality assessment is an essential component of preschool education. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing provide benchmarks for evaluating the validity of inferences made from assessment or test results (AERA, APA & NCME, 2014). According to the Standards, test developers should investigate and document information related…

Background: Personal characteristics of troubled adolescents are affected by psychological deprivation, which contributes to the manifestation of deviant and delinquent behavior in individuals. Aim: This study comprehensively examines structural units of self-consciousness, higher mental functions, and the emotional sphere of troubled adolescents…

Background: The relation between physical activity (PA), motor skills and cognitive function in children is receiving considerable attention. To transition scientific evidence into pedagogical practice, however, we need to further our understanding of which qualitative PA characteristics are best suited to stimulate motor skills and executive…

Anxiety is a common mental health factor associated with school refusal behaviour. This study aims to identify different school refusal behaviour profiles and to determine whether or not these profiles differ from each other based on three anxiety dimensions (Anticipatory Anxiety, School-based performance anxiety and Generalized Anxiety).…

This study aimed to examine the neuropsychological correlates of child patients diagnosed with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or comorbid ASD + ADHD through a multidisciplinary ASD evaluation clinic. Patients completed standardized tests of intellectual, attention, social-affective/cognitive, and executive functioning; and a semi-structured…

Maul's paper, "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation," is a clever and pointed indictment of a set of specific but widespread practices in psychological measurement and the social sciences at large. Through it, Maul highlights central issues in the way to approach theory building and theory testing, bringing to mind the…

Research into the history of colonial education in Congo has shown that, for a long time, it was dominated by the idea of gradual development of the masses. Here, the problem of selecting an intellectual elite hardly arose. It was only in the 1950s that a growing number of voices began to clamour for the Congolese to be permitted to study in…