Describes pilot studies of the Edinburgh Extended Glasgow Outcome Scale (EEGOS), designed to retain the advantages of the GOS (a measure commonly used in head injury research) but to allow comparison of recovery patterns in behavioral, cognitive, and physical function. Studies show that the interrater reliability of the EEGOS is comparable to that…

Used an analytic rubric to score 120 writing samples from Georgia's 11th grade writing assessment. Raters augmented scores by adding a "+" or "-" to the score. Results indicate that this method of augmentation tends to improve most indices of interrater reliability, although the percentage of exact and adjacent agreement…

Investigation of interrater agreement for the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents (ASCA) discriminant classifications is reported. Two teaching professionals provided independent ratings of the same child using the ASCA. A total of 119 students ranging in age from 7 to 18 years were independently rated. Results indicated significant and…

Little research has been conducted on how gifted novices compare to experts in their judgments of creative writing. If novices and experts assign similar ratings, it could be argued that gifted novices are able to offer their peers feedback of a similar quality to that provided by experts. Such a finding would support the use of collaborative…

People with learning disability (LD) experience a range of mental health problems. They are a complex population, whose needs are not well understood. This study focuses on the development of a systematic process of needs assessment for this population. The Cardinal Needs Schedule used in general psychiatry was adapted for people with learning…

Portfolios are frequently used to assess teachers' competences. In portfolio assessment, the issue of rater reliability is a notorious problem. To improve the quality of assessments insight into raters' judgment processes is crucial. Using a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach we studied cognitive processes underlying raters' judgments and…

Given the incidence and seriousness of suicidality in clinical practice, the need for new and better ways to assess suicide risk is clear. While there are many published assessment instruments in the literature, survey data suggest that these measure are not widely used. One possible explanation is that current quantitatively developed assessment…

A performance assessment consisting of 10 separate exercises was scored with a randomized scoring procedure. All responses to each exercise were rated once; in addition, a randomly selected subset of the responses to each exercise received an independent second rating. Each second rating was averaged with the corresponding first rating before the…

The aim of this study was to explore motor development in children with cerebral palsy (CP) using developmental curves for CP, subtypes, and the five severity levels of the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS). The Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM) and the GMFCS were applied to 317 children (145 females, 172 males) with CP, aged…

Objective: To test the reliability and validity of DSM-IV oppositional defiant and conduct disorders (ODD and CD) and symptoms using the Kiddie Disruptive Behavior Disorders Schedule and generate data on the manifestation of symptoms of ODD and CD in 3- to 5-year-old children. Method: One hundred twenty-three consecutive referrals to a child and…

The traditional kappa statistic in assessing interrater agreement is not adequate when multiraters and multiattributes are involved. In this article, latent trait models are proposed to assess the multirater multiattribute (MRMA) agreement. Data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) are used to illustrate the…

We determined the recommendations for preparing and scoring constructed-response (CR) test items in 25 sources (textbooks and chapters) on educational and psychological measurement. The project was similar to Haladyna's (2004) analysis for multiple-choice items. We identified 12 recommendations for preparing CR items given by multiple sources,…

The term "conceptual simulation" refers to a type of everyday reasoning strategy commonly called "what if" reasoning. It has been suggested in a number of contexts that this type of reasoning plays an important role in scientific discovery; however, little "direct" evidence exists to support this claim. This article proposes that conceptual…

Four preschool children (with and without disabilities), who often responded inappropriately to questions, participated in the current study. Pretest results were used to create sets of questions that the children either did or did not answer correctly (i.e., known and unknown questions). We then sequentially taught two different responses to a…

The authors compared business journal ranking systems from 6 countries. Results revealed a low degree of agreement among the systems, and a low to moderate relationship between pairs of systems. In addition, the French and United Kingdom ranking systems were different from each other and from the systems in Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, and the…