Psychological reactance is an important construct for social scientists. The measure most often used to tap psychological reactance is the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (TRS). However, little research to date has examined the psychometric properties of the TRS. Eight hundred and eighty-three individuals completed the TRS and their responses were…

Factor analysis of an initial sample of 368 11-16 year-olds and a test with 1,668 confirmed the reliability and validity of a dance attitude instrument. Two subscales, ballet and male dancers, produced valid measurements of attitudes, but dance performance and presentation scales were less reliable. (SK)

Proposes a revised index of interrater agreement for multi-item ratings of a single target. This index is an inverse linear function of the ratio of the average obtained variance to the variance of the uniformly distributed random error. Discusses the importance of sample size for the index. (SLD)

Findings related to internal consistency, temporal stability, and principal components structures suggest that the Anger Expression Scale (C. Spielberger and others, 1985) and the Pediatric Anger Expression Scale (G. Jacobs and others, 1989), studied with a sample of 415 youth with a mean age of 14.7 years are acceptably reliable. (SLD)

Evaluated coefficient alpha under violations of two classical test theory assumptions: essential tau-equivalence and uncorrelated errors through simulation. Discusses the interactive effects of both violations with true and error scores. Provides empirical evidence of the derivation of M. Novick and C. Lewis (1993). (SLD)

Investigates the consistency of different newspapers in their choice of words when writing about the same news events based on a study of three Finnish newspapers. Concludes that expression inconsistency is a sign of a retrieval problem and that query expansion based on semantic relationships can significantly improve retrieval performance on free…

Used reliability generalization to explore the variance of scores on 10 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) clinical scales drawing on 1,972 articles in the literature on the MMPI. Results highlight the premise that scores, not tests, are reliable or unreliable, and they show that study characteristics do influence scores on the…

The rater agreement literature is complicated by the fact that it must accommodate at least two different properties of rating data: the number of raters (two versus more than two) and the rating scale level (nominal versus metric). While kappa statistics are most widely used for nominal scales, intraclass correlation coefficients have been…

In the present study, the authors investigated the initial development of the Early Expository Comprehension Assessment (EECA) by examining its reliability. The EECA consists of a compare/contrast passage, manipulatives to represent the information in the paragraph, and three response tasks ("Retelling, Mapping, and Comparing"). The authors…

Sample size recommendations in confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have recently shifted away from observations per variable or per parameter toward consideration of model quality. Extending research by Marsh, Hau, Balla, and Grayson (1998), simulations were conducted to determine the extent to which CFA model convergence and parameter estimation…

A sample of 917 children, aged 7 to 17 years, their parents, and their teachers each completed the appropriate version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and 120 from each group did so again 2 weeks later. The results indicate that the SDQ demonstrates sound interinformant and test-retest reliability. Younger children, whose…

Marking reliability is purported to be produced by having an effective community of practice. No experimental research has been identified which attempts to verify empirically the aspects of a community of practice that have been observed to produce marking reliability. This research outlines what that community of practice might entail and…

The commentaries include a wealth of insightful and interesting observations and suggestions, and I appreciate each author taking the time to comment on my efforts. In responding to their suggestions, I am inclined to develop a few general points raised in the commentaries a bit further.

Two experiments examined whether listening to multiple presentations of recorded speech stimuli influences the reliability and accuracy of judgments of children's speech production accuracy. In Experiment 1, 10 listeners phonetically transcribed words produced by children with phonological impairments after a single presentation and after the word…

This investigation assesses interobserver agreement on conversation analytic (CA) transcription. Four professional CA transcribers spent a maximum of 3 hours transcribing 2.5 minutes of a previously unknown, naturally occurring, mundane telephone call. Researchers unitized transcripts into words, sounds, silences, inbreaths, outbreaths, and laugh…