The large majority of students in the Kohlbergian tradition have focused on stages of moral judgment development, on moral reasoning, and on research comparing the influence of standard variables such as age, education, and gender on moral reasoning skills. After briefly comparing the four most frequently employed moral judgment tests developed…

Although action research in education offers researchers and practitioners a clear and philosophically appealing way of making improvements, fostering learning, and developing the individual and the organization, adherents sometimes find themselves defending this type of research because it has been practiced without appropriate rigor. This book…

This paper discusses the rationale for enhancing the current National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) design by adding a capacity for adaptive testing. Items are tailored to the achievement level of the student in adaptive testing. The report describes a 1993 Ohio field trail of two-stage assessment carried out by the National Opinion…

This study investigated the relationship between the scales used for the NMSBA assessments and the RIT scales used to report performance on Northwest Evaluation Association tests. The study estimated the changes in reading and mathematics RIT score equivalents for the NMSBA performance levels in those subjects. Test records for more than 17,000…

This paper reports on a survey of the perceptions of 86 state-level educational assessment personnel or other professionals involved in educational assessment regarding different ways in which test scores are influenced by accommodations for participants with disabilities and how scores obtained under accommodated conditions should be treated in…

The Early Learning Accomplishment Profile (Early LAP) provides a systematic method for observing children's functioning in the birth to 36-month age range in order to assist teachers, clinicians, and parents in assessing individual skills development in six developmental domains: gross motor, fine motor, cognition, language, self-help, and social…

The study reported in this paper is an attempt to develop a comprehensive model of measuring problem solving and posing (PSP) skills based on Marshall's schema theory (ST). A battery of tests on PSP skills was administered to 5th and 6th grade Cypriot students (n=2519). The Rasch model was used and a scale was created for the battery of tests and…

The Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales (CTSPC), a version of the well-established Conflict Tactics Scales, was developed to improve its ability to obtain data on physical and psychological child maltreatment. The conceptual and methodological approaches used to develop the CTSPC are described and psychometric data, including reliability,…

Much of the contention for establishing national educational standards rests on the assumption that such standards are required for a productive labor force and for economic productivity. However, this assumption has not been subjected to rigorous economic analysis. This paper briefly examines the evidence that does exist that links existing and…

To ensure that every child receives appropriate educational and developmental support, professionals who make referrals and who rely on psychological test results need to understand what these tests measure. The principles behind psychological testing, the definitions of key terminology, and the ways in which psychologists interpret test data are…

The first edition of this book was written to give information about testing to people whose work gave them access to test results, but whose training included little or nothing about the use and interpretation of tests. Later editions have been intended for a broader audience as the need for understanding what test scores really mean has…

This report is part of South Carolina's effort to move toward "100 percent performance funding" for the state's public colleges and universities and results from a task force's investigation of ways to assess critical thinking. The following eight major findings are reported: (1) policy makers must determine priorities; (2) critical…

The Teacher List Validation Study was conducted to evaluate the quality of the Teacher Listing Record (TLR), a form used during the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to obtain a list of teachers in each school. The SASS is a set of four inter-related surveys of public and private elementary and secondary schools, districts, teachers, and…

The objective of this study was to investigate the emergence of a "mindy" (a unit of mind). The mindy is characterized as an open, organized, discrete, and kinematic mental shape. The study was the sequel to research on the emergence of mental shape (R. Laassonen, 1993). The subjects were 84 students, aged 13 to 16 years and…

A study was conducted to inquire into serial and parallel relations of information processing. A hypothesis was derived from earlier studies, and it was assumed that serial processing exceeds parallel processing in time. A figure-type test was constructed with two items. The reliability of the measure was examined with the coefficient of…