Validity and reliability of the new high stakes testing systems initiated in school systems across the United States in recent years in response to the accountability features mandated in the No Child Left Behind Legislation largely depend on item response theory and new rules of measurement. Reliability and validity in item response theory and…

Objective: To examine the reliability of the ecSatter Inventory (ecSI), a measure of eating competence. Design: Self-report questionnaires were administered in person or by mail. Retesting occurred 2 to 6 weeks after completion of the first questionnaire. Participants: Both administrations of the questionnaire were completed by 259 participants…

Purpose: To demonstrate the internal reliability and discriminative validity of the Language Use Inventory for Young Children (LUI; D. K. O'Neill, 2002), a newly developed parent-report measure designed to assess pragmatic language development in 18-47-month-olds. Method: To examine internal reliability, the LUI was completed by mail by 177…

Authentic assessment is a growing alternative to conventional testing. This research-to-practice article describes a framework for implementing authentic assessment. The R-E-A-L framework shows how roles, equipment, assessment tools, and location can be incorporated into early childhood practices.

The National Staff Development Council (NSDC), a private, nonprofit association, has outlined high standards for educator professional learning. One demonstration of NSDC's commitment to the goal of ensuring all schools support and use high standards for professional learning is the organization's investment in developing an instrument to assess…

Although measures of student ratings of instruction have been developed and examined empirically, students' attitudes about the utility of these ratings have yet to be meaningfully quantified. Using survey responses from 1229 students at a major Canadian university, we developed a psychometrically sound measure of the usefulness of student…

Objective: To develop a child victimization survey among a diverse group of child protection experts and examine the performance of the instrument through a set of international pilot studies. Methods: The initial draft of the instrument was developed after input from scientists and practitioners representing 40 countries. Volunteers from the…

Despite the existence of little empirical evidence for their effectiveness, many techniques have been suggested for writing multiple-choice items. The option "none of the above" (NA) has been widely used although a recent review of empirical studies of NA suggests that, while generally decreasing the difficulty index, NA also decreases…

The basic processes in univariate statistics involve partitioning the sum of squares into two components: explained and within. This paper explains that the same partitioning occurs in measurement analyses, i.e., splitting the sum of squares into reliable and unreliable components. In addition, it is shown how the three types of error inherent in…

This paper reviews and critically evaluates the psychometric properties of Kolb's Learning Style Inventory (LSI). The LSI was developed originally in the 1970s (Kolb, 1976a) and was revised in the 1980s (Kolb, 1985). Although the LSI has been very popular, extensive evidence available in the published literature indicates that both the original…

For people-helping professionals, the concept of burnout describes the physical and emotional exhaustion they feel on the job. A cognitive-behavioral model defines burnout as a state in which individuals expect few rewards and considerable punishment from work, due to lack of valued reinforcement, controllable outcomes, or personal competence.…

Classical test theory findings can be derived from the concepts of conditional expectation, conditional independence, and related notions. It is shown that these concepts provide precisely the formalism needed to obtain the classical results with minimal assumptions and with greatest economy in the methods of proof. (RC)

An alternative to the conventional right-wrong scoring method used on multiple-choice tests was presented. In the experiment, the examinee continued to respond to a multiple-choice item until feedback signified a correct answer. Findings showed that experimental scores were more reliable but less valid than inferred conventional scores.…

Results support the contention that a Guttman-weighted objective test can have psychometric properties that are superior to those of its unweighted counterpart, as long as omissions do not exist or are assigned a value equal to the mean of the k item alternative weights. (Author/BJG)

Author attempted to prove that one can get useful and reliable information about standards in school mathematics. (Author/RK)