Research has consistently shown that principal leadership matters for successful schools. Evaluating principals on the behaviors shown to improve student learning should be an important leverage point for raising leadership quality. Yet principals are often evaluated with the use of instruments with no theoretical background and little, if any,…

The primary purpose of this study was to provide preliminary validity evidence for a 140-item form of the Vocabulary Size Test, which is designed to measure written receptive knowledge of the first 14,000 words of English. Nineteen native speakers of English and 178 native speakers of Japanese participated in the study. Analyses based on the Rasch…

Modern test construction strategies in the areas of personality and psychopathology differ in the use of disguise within test stimulus material. Previous research on the validity of using disguised test item content has favored the rational strategy of test construction which views disguise as a liability under normal test-taking circumstances.…

Psychometric analyses of data from 230 individuals yielded a 29-item 4-scale revision of the original 50-item 5-scale Mental Retardation Attitude Inventory. Results showed adequate item characteristics; adequate reliability and homogeneity; adequate reliability, homogeneity, specificity, and independence of the four scales; and initial validity…

This study evaluated the Bielefeld Developmental Test for Blind Infants and Preschoolers by comparing cognitive performance of blind and sighted children (ages three and four). Results indicated that even this test (with "blind-neutral" items) did not permit a fair comparative assessment, though it did prove suitable for within-group…

Enough evidence has accumulated on Bloom's "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" for the cognitive domain to justify a review of its communicability. This article covers both published and unpublished studies as well as certain informal reports that bear on this property. It also examines possibilities for improving agreement among…

The purpose of this paper is to further the cause of clarifying construct interpretations of tests, by proposing that non-metric multidimensional scaling may be more useful than factor analysis or other latent structure models for investigating the internal structure of tests. It also suggests that typical problems associated with scaling…

Described are procedures followed in developing, administering, and scoring a set of mathematical problem-solving superitems and examining their construct validity through a recently developed evaluation technique associated with a taxonomy of the structure of learned outcomes. Data strongly support the validity of the underlying theoretical…

Concern for enhancing construct validity of vocational interest measures provides a focus for scale construction quite distinct from that derived from a criterion-referenced strategy: Construct-oriented measurement implies: (1) substantive definitions of dimensions; (2) concern for internal consistency reliability, as well as generalizability; (3)…

The purpose of this research was to recommend an item bias procedure when the number of minority examinees is too small to use preferred three-parameter item response theory (IRT) methods. The chi-square, Angoff delta-plot, and pseudo-IRT indices were compared with both real and simulated data. (Author/DWH)

Describes a paper-and-pencil test for high school biology students measuring science process skills, such as developing hypotheses; making predictions; identifying assumptions; analyzing data; and formulating conclusions. Reports some data on reliability and validity of the test. Provides all 35 items of the test. (YP)

A study was undertaken to develop a partial credit scheme for scoring cloze-type questions on an English collocation test, obtain construct validity evidence for the test and the scoring scheme using the Rasch Partial Credit Model, and compare partial credit scoring with the more commonly used dichotomous scoring with the same test instrument.…

In this paper 45 item-writing rules for multiple-choice tests presented in textbooks on educational measurement in a previous study are identified. The current study presents a quantitative review of the literature with respect to the empirical and theoretical evaluation of these principles of item-writing. Fifty-six studies that addressed at…

The objectives for this study were to: (1) develop a valid, reliable measure of test-wiseness with equivalent forms for use with students in the health sciences; and (2) determine the level of test-wiseness of entering medical students. The test-wiseness areas included in this study were: similar options, umbrella term, item give-away, convergence…

Despite the popularity of both multiple-choice (MC) and true-false (TF) items, most investigations comparing the two formats have done so to determine the optimum number of choices to be given to students within a given time period. The purpose of this investigation was to compare the reliabilities and the validities of both formats when the items…