A study involving 200 adults with mental retardation investigated the interrater reliability and internal consistency of the Matson Evaluation of Drug Side Effects (MEDS), a scale designed to evaluate commonly identified side effects with a psychometrically sound checklist. The MEDS had excellent consistency across raters and good internal…

Responds to a critique by Mudford, Hogg, and Roberts (1997) that raised concerns about the observation code used in a longitudinal research project to assess emerging behavior state patterns in young children with disabilities. Concerns about the thoroughness of the reliability data collected by Mudford are discussed. (Author/CR)

Forty neuropsychologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, and physiatrists identified neurologically relevant items (NRIs) in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). Raters identified four sets of NRIs: one for brain damage in general and three partially overlapping sets for stroke, traumatic brain damage, and whiplash.…

The utility of the Test for Severe Impairment was studied with 60 older persons who had Down Syndrome. Construct validity, test-retest reliability, and interrater reliability were established for the full study group and for subgroups based on degree of mental retardation and dementia status. Some possible applications and limitations of the test…

Presents data from the development and testing of an instrument created to evaluate the oral health of nursing home residents by nursing personnel. Examination of 100 residents by dentists and 3 categories of trained nurses established statistically significant interrater reliability, suggesting that nursing staff can be taught to evaluate the…

A study tested the psychometric properties of the Stereotyped Behavior Scale, an empirically developed behavior rating scale for adolescents and adults with mental retardation. Forty-five adults with mental retardation and various rates of stereotypies participated. Results found the scale had high rates of reliability, validity, and interrater…

This article critiques the research methodology used by Mudford, Hogg, and Roberts (1999) that resulted in a failure to achieve inter-observer agreement on adults with mental retardation when using an experimental, 13-category behavior state code. Arguments are provided on why their videotape study does not meet requirements of acceptable…

The 13-item Chinese Creative Writing Scale was modified from the Carlson Originality Scale to assess creativity elements in compositions of primary school students (n=69) in Hong Kong. Content validity was endorsed by an expert panel and results show the scale has excellent interrater reliability and moderate to good internal consistency.…

A study explored the validity and reliability of using curriculum-based measurement reading procedures for progress monitoring purposes with 36 students with hearing impairments who used manually coded English. Results indicated that interjudge and alternative form reliability was very acceptable. Limitations and implications for using…

This study investigated the comparative reliability of 2 stuttering measurement tools when used by experienced judges: percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and a 9-point severity scale (SEV). The study also investigated the degree to which scores on 1 tool predict scores on the other and the distributions of stuttering when measured by these…

A 26-item Resident Choice Scale was designed to assess service practices for promoting resident choice. The staff working with 560 UK-Irish adults with intellectual disability were interviewed. Specific examples of practices promoting resident choice were requested and independently rated by the interviewer. The interrater reliability of Resident…

This article reports the technical quality of a measure describing the quality of classroom assignments piloted in the Los Angeles Unified School District's proposed new accountability system. For this study, 181 teachers were sampled from 35 schools selected at random. Participating teachers submitted three language arts assignments with samples…

The authors describe the development of the Suicide Attempt Self-Injury Interview (SASII), an instrument designed to assess the factors involved in nonfatal suicide attempts and intentional self-injury. Using 4 cohorts of participants, authors generated SASII items and evaluated them with factor and content analyses and internal consistency…

This study examined certain psychometric properties of the questions about behavioral function (QABF) scale. The QABF was completed on 118 problem behaviours presented by 40 young people with severe intellectual disabilities, and measures of inter-rater reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity were calculated overall and for…

This article describes the construction of a hierarchical taxonomy of metacognitive activities for the interpretation of thinking-aloud protocols of students in secondary education, who studied texts on history and physics. After testing an initial elaborate taxonomy on a restricted number of protocols by multiple raters, it appeared that the…