The authors provide information about test construction and testing practices in order to help parents and teachers to ask important and critical questions about them. Issues pertinent to the appropriate selection, use, and interpretation of tests are presented. (Author/CL)

While there is much enthusiasm about the potential of microcomputers in test development and item banking, testing specialists have no interest in actually purchasing a turnkey test construction system. Focusing development efforts on providing methods to assist test directors, rather than external systems which replace institutionalized…

Developed a 33-item, situation-specific instrument that measures assertiveness of adolescents. Based on data from 682 elementary and secondary school students, adequate reliability and validity of the Assertiveness Scale for Adolescents (ASA) were obtained when tested against several variables about which predictions could be made. (BH)

Illustrates a method for generating continuously adjusted age norms using the normative data for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R). Specific procedures for calculating age-adjusted Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQ scores also are demonstrated, with a worked example. Comparisons show continuous norming scores are more…

The article reviews Consumer's Guide to Tests in Print, noting its purposes (to provide objective information about technical characteristics of standardized tests); criteria for evaluating standardizaton, reliability, and validity; and its rating system based on evaluations of selected review panel members. (CL)

Developed and tested an instrument measuring college students' (N=1,146) self-assessment of stress within academic, social, personal, and family-home environments. Results indicated that students' self-perceptions are capable of remaining reliable over short periods of time and seem to correspond significantly with the construct of referral for…

Discusses the Miscue Reading Inventory and offers an alternative system that keeps its strengths and completeness while eliminating most of its weak points. (FL)

This article illustrates the use of generalizability theory in special education to estimate the reliability of a measure when there is more than one source of error in the universe of inference and how the effects from changing the number of items and/or raters can be evaluated. (Author)

Test construction, administration, grading, and reviewing are discussed. (DT)

Method, results, and conclusions are discussed of a study to compare responses to 3-choice test items with responses to 4-choice items when the question or statement being presented was held constant. (Author/AV)

This newsletter from the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) first discusses The No Child Left Behind Act's strong emphasis on reading skills, in its central article, "Reading a Central Focus of No Child Left Behind Act." It explains that through the authorization of two new programs, Early Reading First (for…

This study examined the validity and reliability of a newly developed instrument for performance assessment of teachers. The instrument was based on the "framework for teaching" proposed by C. Danielson, a framework that identifies the aspects of a teacher's responsibilities that have been documented through empirical studies and theoretical…

This book explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment what students know and how well they know it as well as the methods used to make inferences about student…

This report provides a description of the item types that have appeared on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) from the first administration of the test in February 1948 through 1994. Also included is information related to the General Background and Writing tests that were administered for some time in an afternoon session, but for which…

Based on the results of a Phase 1 investigation into the nature of legal writing, a prototype writing assessment, the Diagnostic Writing Skills Test (DWST) for entering law students was developed. The DWST is composed of two multiple-choice testlets based on prompts and responses to the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) Writing Sample. It contains…