Construct validity concerns for the IPT I Oral Grades K-6 Spanish Second Edition (IPT-S) as a measure of native oral language proficiency are examined. The examination included describing a subset of items that contributes most to overall score and native-language proficiency designation. Correlations between this subset of items and the overall…

The Parent Education Profile (PEP) is an instrument used by family literacy programs to rate parents' support for children's literacy development. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how the PEP constructs the ideal parent, the text's underlying assumptions about parenting and education, and its ideological effects. The…

The authors developed and validated a measure of teachers' motivation toward specific work tasks: The Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers (WTMST). The WTMST is designed to assess five motivational constructs toward six work tasks (e.g., class preparation, teaching). The authors conducted a preliminary (n = 42) and a main study among…

Bounds are established for log cross-product ratios (log odds ratios) involving pairs of items for item response models. First, expressions for bounds on log cross-product ratios are provided for unidimensional item response models in general. Then, explicit bounds are obtained for the Rasch model and the two-parameter logistic (2PL) model.…

Structural equation modeling allows several methods of estimating the disattenuated association between 2 or more latent variables (i.e., the measurement model). In one common approach, measurement models are specified using item parcels as indicators of latent constructs. Item parcels versus original items are often used as indicators in these…

Two studies of 5-month-old infants explored whether a phenomenon reported by K. Wynn (1992) reflects a familiarity preference instead of a mathematical competence. Experiment 1 was a conceptual replication of Wynn's study. When data were analyzed with the relatively liberal statistical approach used by Wynn, the original phenomenon was replicated.…

The standardization data for the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II; D. C. Delis, J. H. Kramer, E. Kaplan, & B. A. Ober, 2000) were used to evaluate the base rate of 6 specific discrepancies between various key variables. The results indicated that CVLT-II performance discrepancies should equal or exceed 1 or 1.5 z score…

The new IEA "International Civic and Citizenship Education Study" (ICCS) will investigate the extent to which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens across a range of countries. ICCS will survey 13-to-14-year old students in over 30 countries in the year 2009. The ICCS outcome data will be obtained from representative…

The present study investigated whether two summated rating scales used in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2003), Mathematics Self-Concept (MSC), and Students' Valuing of Mathematics (VoM) seemed appropriate, meaningful, and useful in a Swedish context. The 4,256 Swedish eighth-grade students involved in TIMSS 2003…

The study examined the effects of item format, self-concept and anxiety on response changing behaviour. Four hundred undergraduate students who offered a counseling psychology course in a Nigerian university participated in the study. Students' answers in multiple--choice and true--false formats of an achievement test were observed for response…

The School Motivation and Learning Strategies Inventory (SMALSI) is a diagnostic tool that helps educators identify and measure strategies that are actively used by students for learning. It is a self-report inventory for use with students 8 through 12 years of age (SMALSI-Child Form) and also with older students aged 13 to 18 years (SMALSI-Teen…

The "Ohio Youth Problems, Functioning, and Satisfaction Scales" (Ohio Scales) are a recently developed set of measures designed to be a brief, practical assessment of changes in behavior over time in children and adolescents. The authors explored the convergent validity of the Ohio Scales by examining the relationship between the scales and…

The article reports results from a Human Early Learning Partnership initiative that aims to address limitations within the literature concerning neighborhood effects on child development. Problems include the tendency for studies to (a) rely on small samples of children, (b) focus on high-risk populations, (c) define neighborhood by Census…

The Violence Risk Scale-Sexual Offender version (VRS-SO) is a rating scale designed to assess risk and predict sexual recidivism, to measure and link treatment changes to sexual recidivism, and to inform the delivery of sexual offender treatment. The VRS-SO comprises 7 static and 17 dynamic items empirically or conceptually linked to sexual…

Alternatives to the standard statewide assessment often are necessary for valid measurement of students with significant disabilities. These alternate assessments must be carefully developed and evaluated with respect to generally accepted psychometric standards. Ideally, these measures should be sensitive to growth and scaled to state tests that…