Purpose of the investigation was to identify the underlying content and cognitive dimensions in a standardized achievement test in the area of life and health insurance. (Author)

Despite the numerous individual illustrations in the literature showing how the discrimination index may be used to identify items with faults, its overall effectiveness as a measure of item quality, defined in terms of the presence or absence of faults, is not clear. This study investigates its validity. (Author/RK)

There is evidence that when spatial orientation and spatial visualization are measured with either the French or Guilford-Zimmerman tests that the variance due to authorship is greater than that due to trait. (Authors)

Research Project at Utica College to identify potential college dropouts using the technique of Multiple Discriminant Analysis. (RY)

Interprets College Interest Inventory, administered to 284 students, both ways, with neither method proving superior. Suggests that under restricted conditions, discriminant function might be more appropriate for counseling purposes than configural analysis. (Author/CJ)

Used a current attrition study to show the usefulness of discriminative analysis and a cross validation technique applied to student nonpersister questionnaire respondents and nonrespondents. Results of the techniques allowed delineation of several areas of sample under-representation and established the instability of the regression weights…

Differences between underachieving and nonunderachieving study skills students were found on measures of study skills knowledge and an extraversion-introversion personality dimension. Nonunderachievers reported greater study skills knowledge but not greater study skills use than underachievers. Findings were attributed to differences in…

In a recent article in this journal (EJ 130 391) Siegel and Bergman described a "miniature job training and evaluation" approach to performance prediction. This research highlights their methodology's strengths and weaknesses in light of standard procedures recommended in developing any set of predictors. (Author/RK)

Argues that statistical analysis of the potential distinctiveness of near-merged contrastive pairs must simultaneously take into account several acoustical dimensions. Discriminant analysis of the speech of five Utah speakers distinguished near-merged contrasts but not homophones, suggesting that discriminant analysis is useful in assessing…

Discusses three topics related to interpretation of discriminant analyses (DA's): (1) partial F ratios and partial Wilks's lambdas for predictor variables in standard, step-down, and stepwise DA's; (2) relation of goals of classification to definition/evaluation of classification rules; and (3) significance tests for total hit rates in internal…

Standardization procedures in discriminant analysis are discussed. Three leading software packages--SPSSX, BMDP, and SAS--are compared in terms of their calculations of unstandardized and standardized discriminant coefficients. Estimation procedures are described for each. Arguments are presented for within-group, rather than total, variance…