The objective of this study was to refine the Children's Social Behavior Questionnaire (CSBQ), to reduce its length, and to verify its psychometric properties. The CSBQ is a questionnaire for parents or caregivers of children with PDD. The items describe a broad range of features that are typical of PDD, particularly in its milder forms. Based on…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to document the prevalence of sampling designs utilised in mixed-methods research and to examine the interpretive consistency between interpretations made in mixed-methods studies and the sampling design used. Classification of studies was based on a two-dimensional mixed-methods sampling model. This…

This study provides a framework for the evaluation of assessments that may be used in adult continuing education. It provides an example of the analysis of an examination for 33 solicitors seeking specialist accreditation. Resampling was used to generate a group of 1000 results, and responses were analysed using a Rasch model. Results indicated a…

Studies hypothesized and tested that a judge's discriminal process is a sample from a normal distribution of all possible discriminal processes for the MMPI stimulus set; that standard deviations of two distributions of binary MMPI decisions are equal; and that discriminative capacities of judges remain fixed from one decision session to the next.…

This study tested Deiker's hypothesis that "naysaying" accounts for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Overcontrolled-Hostility (O-H) scale's ability to discriminate among criminal groups differing in their propensity for violence. It was concluded that the validity of the O-H scale is not dependent on naysaying. (Author)

A historical perspective on and substantive review of the concept of invariance are provided. Progress made toward solving measurement problems related to invariance is also assessed. Two major classes of invariant measurement are described: (1) sample-invariant item calibration; and (2) item-invariant measurement of individuals. The work of S. S.…

The effects of superficial gender-related item wording changes on the performance of male and female examinees were studied through mathematics; discrete English items; and an English passage created in neuter, male, and female gender versions. Units of items were administered to randomly equivalent samples of about 250 examinees taking American…

Large-scale educational assessments differ from familiar educational measurements by attempting to provide information about the levels and natures of skills in populations rather than in individuals. That the distinct purposes of assessment require different methodologies than individual measurement was recognized by the development of…

An item content criterion, independent of the test psychometric characteristics, of classifying items as biased is described. It was used with a sample of female adults in a training program for administrative secretaries. The minority group in the study were Hispanic immigrants. The majority group was a mixture of Blacks, English speaking…

Two order theoretic techniques were presented and compared. Ordering theory of Krus and Bart (1974) and an extended Takeya's item relational structure analysis (IRS) by Tatsuoka and Tatsuoka (1981) were used to extract the hierarchical item structure from three datasets. Directed graphs were constructed and both methods were assessed as to how…

Assessment of self-esteem has been part of Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment Program for 12 years. Since school building reports describe the results of assessment in predominantly norm referenced terms, additional information is needed to supplement the comparative data. This paper, intended for the practioner, describes an item…

The usefulness of a latent trait model designed for use with multidimensional test data was investigated in two stages. The first stage consisted of generating simulation data to fit the multidimensional extension of the two-parameter logistic model, applying the model to the data, and comparing the resulting estimates with the known parameters.…