Studies with 220 college students found that multiple-choice test items with 3 items are more difficult than those with 4 items, and items with the none-of-these option are more difficult than those without this option. Neither format manipulation affected item discrimination. Implications for test construction are discussed. (SLD)

A motivation questionnaire was used to investigate dominant factors and features of motivation among 90 Singapore elementary school teachers. Through item analysis, the following factors emerged as underlying motivations: esteem, self-actualization, security, autonomy, belongingness, achievement orientation, professional challenge, and task…

Examines whether a defect of the C-test can be avoided by constructing a C-test with five texts and 126 items. The test was tried with 146 Iranian English majors. On the basis of item analysis, a tailored C-test with 100 items was developed and tried with 60 other subjects. Results show no gains were made with the classical item analysis.…

Examines data from a think-aloud study and explores how randomly selected undergraduates react to "extreme" intensifiers and hedges. Results indicate that think-aloud data can within limits provide valid evidence of attention to specific words, and that there is a need to distinguish between attending to a word and using it to formulate…

Counselor educators need to be able to demonstrate their effectiveness in training new counselors; however, currently few valid or reliable measures exist for assessing educators' impact. The authors describe the development of such an instrument, the Counseling Skills Scale. They began by revising an existing scale and then they solicited…

Research into the technical adequacy of statewide alternate assessments is limited. In this study, the authors analyzed 2 years of data from one state's alternate assessment in written language in an attempt to validate current test score interpretations. More than 1,000 students were included in each year. Findings support the test's technical…

Higher education scholars and institutional researchers rely heavily on self-reported survey data in their work. This chapter explores problems associated with self-reports and provides questions and recommendations for their use.

Because surveys now can be implemented with relative ease and little cost, many researchers are overlooking the basic principles of survey research. This chapter discusses sources of error that researchers should consider when conducting a survey, and gives readers basic suggestions for reducing error. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of four item selection rules--(1) Fisher information (F), (2) Fisher information with a posterior distribution (FP), (3) Kullback-Leibler information with a posterior distribution (KP), and (4) completely randomized item selection (RN)--with respect to the precision of trait estimation and the…

In this paper, we present a critical examination of the literature on subjective person-organization (P-O) fit and highlight several conceptual and measurement issues that may be perpetuating confusion in this literature. Specifically, we reviewed 46 empirical studies that have measured P-O fit perceptions and identified three primary sources of…

In two experiments, we examined the recent claim (Stewart, Pickering, & Sanford, 2000) that verb-based implicit causality information is used during sentence-final clausal integration only. We did so by looking for mid-sentence reading delays caused by pronouns that are inconsistent with the bias of a preceding implicit causality verb (e.g.,…

The role of assessment is central to the current work in the field of self-regulation research, to the conceptualizations derived from empirical work, and to the operationalisation of its concepts in individual and classroom implementations. The various instantiations of the concept of self-regulation, all presuppose a detailed accounting of many…

This study compares the ability of the multiple indicators, multiple causes (MIMIC) confirmatory factor analysis model to correctly identify cases of differential item functioning (DIF) with more established methods. Although the MIMIC model might have application in identifying DIF for multiple grouping variables, there has been little…

This research examined the degree of comparability and sources of incomparability of English and French versions of reading, mathematics, and science tests that were administered as part of a survey of achievement in Canada. The results point to substantial psychometric differences between the 2 language versions. Approximately 18% to 36% of the…

In 2 eye-movement experiments, the authors tested whether transitional probability (the statistical likelihood that a word precedes or follows another word) affects reading times and whether this occurs independently from contextual predictability effects. Experiment 1 showed early effects of predictability, replicating S. A. McDonald and R. C.…