A study involving 257 Navajo Indians and Mexican American elementary students, used the Raven Progressive Matrices to examined the concurrent validity of the DISCOVER assessment. Results provided some evidence for concurrent validity and showed that, through the use of the DISCOVER assessment, 22.9 percent were identified as gifted. (Contains…

A review of 913 studies involving students with learning disabilities found treatment outcomes were significantly affected by the following violations: teacher effects, establishing criterion levels of instructional performance, reliance on experimental measures, using different pretest and posttest measures, using a sample heterogeneous in age,…

This volume is the fourth in a series for college faculty and advanced graduate students, "Survival Skills for Scholars." It offers practical advice for developing, using, and grading classroom examinations, focusing on traditional multiple-choice and constructed-response tests rather than alternative assessments. (SLD)

Presents a multidimensional conceptualization of family functioning that is embedded within a family systems framework. Discusses operational issues pertaining to the assessment of family functioning when conceived of as a complex and multidimensional construct, and explores measurement strategies and analytical approaches. (JPS)

Presentation of quantitative research on the family often suffers from a tendency to interpret findings on a statistical rather than substantive basis. Advocates the use of data analysis that lends itself to an intuitive understanding of the nature of the findings, the strength of the association, and the import of the result. (JPS)

Reports on a project to develop and validate a criterion-referenced performance test of listening summary translation ability. This exam is designed to assess ability to comprehend and summarize in written English recorded conversations spoken in Spanish. The Bachman framework is used to present the test and provide evidence for its validity. (12…

Facilitated communication (FC) as an augmentative or alternative communication system was evaluated with 14 students having autism. At the end of 10 weeks of instruction, no participants were able to produce functional, typed communication, thereby failing to support the cause-effect relationship proposed by FC proponents. (DB)

Argues that school guidance counselors today have many school-related duties in addition to counseling. Investigates ways to implement a program whereby the counselor's role is clearly defined, formally reviewed, and redefined as needed. Encourages school guidance counselors to validate their roles by defining them more accurately and seeking the…

Comparison of 26 hospitalized psychiatric youth with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with 27 similar youth without ADHD on the "Freedom from Distractibility" factor of the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children III found no significant intergroup differences, thus concluding that this factor is not a valid discriminant…

This article proposes a new type of pronunciation test, based on the variability principle and language continuum paradigm developed by Tarone (1983, 1985). Trials with 80 elementary and 73 university students indicate that the test distinguishes between subjects with and without phonetic training and is generally reliable and valid. Contains 31…

Finkelhor's Risk Factor Checklist factors were reexamined as predictors of childhood sexual abuse, employing procedures to facilitate a high degree of honest and diligent task implementation and strong ethical safeguards for female college students (n=411). Subjects reported an incidence rate of 24.3%; only one of the checklist's eight factors…

Individuals (n=178) in community sites involved with persons having severe disabilities were surveyed concerning attitudes toward the social acceptability of commonly used training techniques, including antecedent, consequence, and data collection techniques. Groups of respondents differentially rated the social acceptability of the techniques.…

A study used the Delphi technique to validate teaching competencies of graduate teaching assistants. A panel of 17 experts in teaching assistant support and training validated 26 competencies as important but also suggested some depend on specific responsibilities assigned to the teaching assistants. (Author/MSE)

Discusses topical relevance and situational relevance, which takes into account the impact of the retrieval system on the user, in the context of medicine. Topics addressed include scientific validity; limitations of current evaluation methodology, including recall and precision; and a framework for future retrieval research based on an…

To examine the validity of distinguishing children with reading disabilities according to discrepancy and low-achievement definitions, 4 assessments of expected achievement and 2 of actual achievement were obtained for 199 elementary school students. Results do not support the validity of the discrepancy versus the low-achievement definition.…