Established in 1992, Ofsted is championed by government ministers as the guardian of educational standards in schools and colleges. Ofsted has never produced any research on the validity of its inspection judgements. Ofsted has no evidence, other than rising percentages of schools being awarded positive Ofsted grades, to support its assertion that…

The "Parenting Stress Index, Fourth Edition" (PSI-4) is a 120-item measure used to explore parental stress levels considering a parent's relationship with one of his or her children between the ages of 1 month and 12 years. The main purpose of the test is to define these stress levels and from where they originate in order to identify…

The present article describes the development and initial validation of the Inventory of Microaggressions Against Black Individuals (IMABI) using a sample of 385 undergraduates who self-identified as Black or African American. The IMABI is a 14-item, unidimensional measure of racial microaggressions that captures both microinsults and…

The original Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms (IDAS) contains 11 nonoverlapping scales assessing specific depression and anxiety symptoms. In creating the expanded version of the IDAS (the IDAS-II), our goal was to create new scales assessing other important aspects of the anxiety disorders as well as key symptoms of bipolar disorder.…

This article proposes a distinction between "fairness" and "justice" in relation to language tests. Basing its discussion on the validity theory of Samuel Messick, it discusses the way in which these terms have been used in the existing literature, and their relationship to the concept of validity. Fairness, broadly speaking,…

Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is a novel therapy that employs finger tapping on purported acupressure points. Over the past decade, TFT, promoted on the Internet and through testimonials of fast cures, has gained popularity with therapists, including clinical social workers. Although TFT claims to cure a wide variety of psychological and physical…

Data suggesting that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is efficacious for late-life anxiety are accumulating; however, effectiveness has not been well established. Incorporating CBT for anxiety into home care is needed to facilitate access to evidenced-based treatment for a growing population of community-dwelling, functionally impaired elderly…

Heterosocial interactions, or social interactions with other-sex peers, are theorized to serve a number of unique developmental functions for adolescents (e.g., companionship, intimacy, experimentation with sex-role behaviors and sexual activity). Yet despite the importance of heterosocial competence in adolescent social development, there exists…

A theoretical advantage of item response theory (IRT) models is that trait estimates based on these models provide more test information than any other type of test score. It is still unclear, however, whether using IRT trait estimates improves external validity results in comparison with the results that can be obtained by using simple raw…

Single constructs measured using positively and negatively worded items are often incompatible with a congeneric model, but require 2 correlated factors. Imperfect correlation entails that 2 independent dimensions are required for representing the true variance. If 2 dimensions are sought, how can they be interpreted? This study shows how to…

A study (n=242) investigated the effectiveness of a simple seven-item scale designed to quantify indices of emotional distress during the rectal-genital phase of a child sexual-abuse examination. The Genital Examination Distress Scale found increased distress was associated with positive physical findings. (CR)

Presents a multidimensional conception of fear of death and provides subscales for measuring suggested dimensions (fear of the dying process, of the dead, of being destroyed, for significant others, of the unknown, of conscious death, for body after death, and of premature death). Evidence for construct validity is provided. (Author/BEF)

This article describes a method for the intraindividual clinical validation of a cognitive case formulation (CCF) involving hypotheses about the patient's idiosyncratic cognitive schema (ICS). The two-stage approach begins by testing the convergent and discriminant validity of the hypothesized ICS against the individual's daily ratings of…

I review the Common Factors Model, the Empirically Validated Therapy Model, and the Recovery Model of therapeutic change and effectiveness. In general, psychotherapy appears to be effective and common factors account for more of the variance than do specific techniques. However, in some areas, particularly in the treatment of anxiety disorders,…

This article discusses issues related to the development and dissemination of evidence-based assessment strategies for anxiety disorders and associated problems. It begins with a review of the criteria that should be considered when determining whether particular assessment procedures are evidence-based. These include such factors as reliability,…