While well-established attachment measures have been developed for infancy, early childhood, and adulthood, a "measurement gap" has been identified in middle childhood, where behavioral or representational measures are not yet sufficiently robust. This article documents the development of a new measure--the Child Attachment Interview…

This study examined the psychometric characteristics of two parenting measures: the Parent Behavior Importance Questionnaire (PBIQ) and Parent Behavior Frequency Questionnaire (PBFQ). Both research questionnaires are based on the parent development theory (PDT) and offer parent as well as non-parent respondents the opportunity to rate 38 parenting…

This study addresses the development of a teacher questionnaire to assess the social participation of pupils with special needs in regular primary schools and is divided into 2 parts. In the 1st part, the construction of the questionnaire is described. The questionnaire consists of 30 statements related to 4 key themes of social participation: …

Providing fair assessment with timely feedback for students is a difficult task with science laboratory classes containing large numbers of students. Throughout our Faculty, such classes are assessed by short-answer questions (SAQs) centred on principles encountered in the laboratory. We have shown recently that computer-assisted assessment (CAA)…

The Tutotest is one of the few structured instruments developed for the assessment of students' learning skills in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum. This study was designed to validate the Tutotest in a hybrid PBL curriculum. Forty-four tutors completed 370 evaluations on second to fourth year medical students at the end of the first…

Research Findings: Few rating scales measure social competence in very young Spanish or Catalan children. We aimed to analyze the psychometric characteristics of the California Preschool Social Competence Scale (CPSCS) when applied to a Spanish- and Catalan-speaking population. Children were rated by their respective teachers within 6 months…

Evaluation research pertaining to the development of assessment instruments that fully capture the facets of empowerment prevention perspectives among youth are sparse. With funding from the American Legacy Foundation, the University of New Mexico Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, in partnership with the New Mexico State…

Objective: The multifaceted nature of training and the diverse backgrounds of potential Senior House Officers (Postgraduate Residents) require a novel approach to the selection of trainees wishing to pursue a career in psychiatry. The author reports the properties of a semi-structured interview (the SCRIPT) for assessing doctors short-listed for a…

This article presents the author's comments on Simon and Lichten's "Defining Mental Retardation: A Matter of Life and Death." Lichten and Simon (2007) argued for the use of a Total Quotient (TQ) that combines existing IQ and adaptive functioning scores into a single index. They proposed that the TQ index will improve the accuracy of mental…

The current study examined the initial psychometrics of the "Early Childhood Behavior Problem Screening Scale" (ECBPSS; Epstein & Nelson, 2006), namely the factor structure and associated internal consistency of factor items of parent and teacher versions as well as interrater reliability. Data came from samples of preschool- and…

Objective: Risk criteria for the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (CHAT) and modified risk criteria (i.e. the Denver Criteria) were compared in a group of children with fragile X syndrome (FXS) and autism. Method: Participants were 17 children aged 2-4 years with DNA confirmation of FXS. Four children had autism and 13 children did not. Results:…

Purpose: The purpose of this report is to evaluate the reliability and validity of the five-item Evaluation to Sign Consent (ESC), a measure that can guide determination of an older adult's capacity to consent for research. Design and Methods: Information was obtained from 346 nursing home residents from six facilities who were being enrolled into…

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the distinctness and reliability of analytic (or multitrait) rating dimensions and their relationships to holistic scores and "e-rater"® essay feature variables in the context of the TOEFL® computer-based test (CBT) writing assessment. Data analyzed in the study were analytic and holistic…

Courses in Spoken English (SE) are yet to be acceptable in Indian universities because conducting session-end tests in SE is assumed to be logistically difficult and academically problematic. This article argues that it need not necessarily be so; session-end tests can be conducted just as in other courses. With voice recording, preferably a…

The purpose of this study was to develop a teaching quality assessment questionnaire and assess its reliability by using it with a sample of first-year medical students. Principal components analysis with varimax orthogonal rotation resulted in the development of a 12-item, two-component tool, adequate for use in lectures and small-group sessions.…