In the context of developing assessment instruments in psychology, issues of standardization, norming procedures, and test reliability and validity are discussed. Criteria, guidelines, and rules of thumb are provided to help the clinician with instrument selection for a given psychological assessment. (SLD)

Presents research on individuals' ability to perform Piaget's water-level task. At almost every age and for each sex, some subjects had high probability of success and some had low. Age-related improvement was not a result of children's increasing accuracy in task performance. Differences in performance between sexes were evident at all ages.…

Regular classroom teachers and special education teachers (total n=130) were surveyed to determine their attitudes toward assessment reports written by other professionals. Results indicated lack of enthusiasm, hostility, and resignation to the assessments' perceived irrelevance and uselessness. (Author/JDD)

A two-parameter logistic regression model for personnel selection is proposed. The model was tested with a database of 84,808 military enlistees. The probability of job success was related directly to trait levels, addressing such topics as selection, validity generalization, employee classification, selection bias, and utility-based fair…

Compared to children matched for mental or chronological age, 12 autistic children (ages 10-17) showed frontal lobe processing problems on neuropsychological tests. Subjects made more errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Milner Maze and took longer to complete the maze but copied a complex figure as accurately and speedily as…

This paper discusses psychological test obstacles to gaining the acceptance of a diagnosis of mental retardation in criminal defendants, use of the Revised Beta intelligence test with defendants who may be retarded, possible modification of the adaptive behavior criterion for criminal defendants, and appropriateness of the death penalty for…

The standardization of the Escala de Inteligencia Wechsler para Adultos (EIWA) and the original Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) were subjected to principal components analysis to examine their comparability for 616 EIWA subjects and 800 WAIS subjects. Similarity of factor structures of both scales is supported. (SLD)

The reliability and validity of the revised California Psychological Inventory's (CPI) Vector 1 scale, a measure of introversion and extraversion, were studied with 345 college students (109 males and 236 females). Results support the scale as a valid measure of the introversion-extraversion construct of H. G. Gough. (SLD)

The history of the concept of intelligence is reviewed, and the construction and uses of psychological tests are explored. Skills consist of a large number of abilities. It is argued that the psychological entity, intelligence, is determined by particular contexts, contexts often induced by social demands. (SLD)

The utility of information derived from a consumer satisfaction questionnaire was demonstrated via an analysis of feedback from 22 referring health professionals (21 physicians and 1 clinical psychologist) who replied to questions about their satisfaction with neuropsychological evaluation reports. The questionnaire used was the Neuropsychology…

A detailed investigation is provided of Stout's statistical procedure (the computer program DIMTEST) for testing the hypothesis that an essentially unidimensional latent trait model fits observed binary item response data from a psychological test. Three refinements achieve greater power. The revised approach is validated using real data sets.…

Investigated whether children's ability to recognize themselves in delayed video feedback indicates change in self awareness. Parallel results in both conditions studied, and the likelihood of false positives and false negatives indicate that the video test in its present form may not be a valid measure of differences in self-awareness. (Author)

Individual differences in confidence judgments made by subjects on the accuracy of their answers to psychological test items were studied with 271 Australian college students. Findings suggest that confidence ratings, like the accuracy scores from the tests of human abilities, are stable and reliable measures of between-subjects variability. (SLD)

Investigated the effectiveness of analyzing drawings of 8- to 12-year-old children as a method of understanding the effects of living and coping with ongoing civic unrest. Compared drawings by white and black South African children with those of children from Belfast, Ireland. Found cross-national differences in stress, emotion, adjustment, and…

Describes a survey of libraries listed in several special collections directories to determine how educational and psychological tests were organized and managed. Discusses access through cataloging or classification; management practices such as staffing, hours of availability, security, and preservation methods; and a copy of the survey is…