Thirty-six undergraduate psychology students who had high measured test anxiety were randomly assigned to one of three groups: covert reinforcement, placebo control, and no-treatment control. Pretreatment, posttreatment, and follow-up scores were obtained on three criterion measures. The findings supported the use of covert reinforcement for…

A study of children enrolled in a year-round preschool program for the "culturally disadvantaged" in Tampa, Florida revealed that children with defective vision performed more poorly on both the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and Metropolitan Readiness Test. (Author/JM)

An analysis of the content, process, and purposes of common evaluation practices has revealed ten specific dehumanizing effects on participating students and educators. More humanistic, alternative evaluation practices have been suggested for each. (Author/BJG)

College students were treated with either a standard or modified version of systematic desensitization. Relative to a no-treatment control group, both treatment methods produced significant reductions in both the treated and untreated fears. The implications these findings have for two alternative conceptions of systematic desensitization are…

The cultural test bias hypothesis represents the contention that all ethnic or racial group differences on mental tests are due to inherent, artifactual biases produced within the tests through flawed psychometric methodology. This address focuses on an empirical evaluation of the cultural test bias hypothesis, especially emphasizing the construct…

Measurement issues related to assessment of the individual in both formal and non-formal education are outlined. First, techniques to assess the educational value of life experiences (especially adults contemplating new educational or work experiences are described). The work of Ruth Ekstrom stresses deriving the dimensions of accomplishment to be…

The susceptibility to faking on the Tennessee Self Concept Scale was examined among college students. Additionally, groups of respondents, instructed to respond in a "random" fashion to pre-determined numbers of items in the TSCS, were subjected to a plausibility analysis of their test response vectors using the Rasch measurement model.…

As test standards and research literature in general indicate, definitions of test bias and item bias vary considerably, as do the results of existing methods of identifying biased items. The situation is further complicated by issues of content, context, construct, and criterion. In achievement tests, for example, content validity may impose…

This paper discusses the quality of tests with respect to their different uses. Standardized tests are defined as standardized procedures for eliciting responses from individuals, and these form the basis for some sort of appraisal. They can include intelligence tests, achievement tests, school readiness tests, and self concept measures. Oscar…

The validity of the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery was examined using test results of 50 learning disabled fourth graders. The appropriateness of the developmental strategy and the evidence for the external validity of the cluster measures contained in the battery were considered. Results indicated that the factor and scholastic…

The subject of constructing criterion-referenced tests is often researched, but many technical problems remain to be satisfactorily resolved. Foremost, criterion-referenced test developers need a comprehensive set of steps for construction. In this paper, 14 logical steps for building criterion-referenced tests that refer to several different…

The roles of humor and anxiety in test performance were investigated. Measures of trait anxiety, state anxiety and achievement were obtained on a sample of undergraduate students; the A-Trait and A-State scales of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were used. Half of the students received additional humorous items in the achievement test. The…