Makes a case that the architects of national testing posited a measuring scale in which consecutive levels were separated by 2 years of learning under the influence of the "thought disorder" described by J. Michell, who claimed that psychological measurement may be little more than numerical coding. (SLD)

Identifies drawbacks of testing, especially high-stakes, standardized tests, and acknowledges pressures on teachers to acquiesce. Encourages teachers to focus on deep learning; use of higher-level questions, tasks, and projects; a wide range of materials; transfer of learning to other contexts; and ways to diffuse tension and build enthusiasm for…

The Marital Aggrandizement Scale (MAS) was developed as a couples measure of biased responding. Results of the current study suggest that responses to the MAS are gender invariant. Differences emerge, however, for psychological well being and self deception. These results may explain differences in marital satisfaction between older men and women.…

Distance Education has globally become one of the important solutions for increasing admission into the universities, decongesting campuses and efficient utilization of time and space. To ensure the sustainability of the programmes' noble objectives calls for periodic re-evaluation of its modus operandi including the assessment of the perception…

By viewing standardized reading tests as a unique genre that could be taught, the author designed a two-week genre study for her reading workshop. The article describes how she planned, taught, and reflected on the unit. This genre study resolved some of the dilemmas she faced around preparing students for mandated testing. (Contains 1 table and 2…

A potential undesirable effect of multistage testing is differential speededness, which happens if some of the test takers run out of time because they receive subtests with items that are more time intensive than others. This article shows how a probabilistic response-time model can be used for estimating differences in time intensities and speed…

Quality assurance in instructional development demands an exhaustive formative evaluation effort and applied testing. Unfortunately, this process is expensive and requires large numbers of user testers with characteristics similar to the intended audience. This article presents a procedure for increasing the efficiency of quality assurance efforts…

An index is proposed to detect cheating on multiple-choice examinations, and its use is evaluated through simulations. The proposed index is based on the compound binomial distribution. In total, 360 simulated data sets reflecting 12 different cheating (copying) situations were obtained and used for the study of the sensitivity of the index in…

Recently, several person-fit statistics have been proposed to detect nonfitting response patterns. This study is designed to generalize an approach followed by Klauer (1995) to an adaptive testing system using the two-parameter logistic model (2PL) as a null model. The approach developed by Klauer is described, and some difficulties in…

The Personal Preference Self-Description Questionnaire (PPSDQ) was developed to measure personal preferences as regards Jungian psychological types. Instruments in this area are among the most popular measures used in education and psychology; the measures are used in matching teaching and learning styles, in individual counseling and family…

A study examined whether composition specialists can counterbalance the potential privileging of the assessment perspective, or of self-appointed interpreters of that perspective, through the study of assessment discourse as text. Fourteen assessment texts were examined, most of them journal articles and most of them featuring the common…

To investigate the practicality of developing short forms of the Porch Index of Communicative Ability, the results from tests previously administered to 222 aphasic patients were analyzed. (Author/LS)

The possible application of ideas to control test scoring is discussed. (Author)

The possible application of ideas to control test scoring is discussed. (Author)

Reports the results of an experiment in which 146 college freshmen were asked either to fake bad answers, fake good answers or record their own views on the Defining Issues Test. Findings indicated that students could not fake higher scores, but could fake bad scores. (SDH)