Classroom observations are increasingly common in education policies as a means to assess the quality of teachers and/or education programs for purposes of making high-stakes decisions. This article considers one policy, the Head Start Designation Renewal System (DRS), which involves classroom observations to assess the quality of Head Start…

This article calls into question the use of the h-index as an aid to decision-making in the higher education sector. The h-index is increasingly employed by institutions, funding bodies and even governments as a guide to the allocation of resources. This practice is contrary to the evidence that the h-index is intrinsically meaningless, a point…

The aim of this research is to investigate if the attachment styles significantly predict the decision self-esteem, decision making styles and five-factor personality traits. Subjects of the study were 567 students in total from different faculties of Selcuk University. The results of the study showed that the attachment styles of the students…

The use of curriculum-based measures for the purpose of school-wide screening and progress monitoring of reading within school reform processes has been discussed extensively in the literature over the past several years. Little has been done, however, in terms of evaluating the predictive bias of these measures across ethnic groups, particularly…

How do people judge the monetary value of objects? One clue is provided by the typical endowment study (D. Kahneman, J. L. Knetsch, & R. H. Thaler, 1991), in which participants are randomly given either a good, such as a coffee mug, that they may later sell ("sellers") or a choice between the good and amounts of cash ("choosers"). Sellers…

Describes the development and validation of a method for pretesting the reader interest value of comic strips and cartoons so that the "best" ones may be selected for printing from the available options. (Author/GT)

To address criticisms that the empirical literature on assessment of career decision making has tended to lack a theoretical base, the present study explored the relevance of a general theory of decision making to career decision making by assessing the psychometric properties of the Decision Making Inventory (DMI), designed to measure Johnson's…

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) reviewed 71 actuarial, behavioral, and economic models that are used for retirement forecasting, focusing on models of federal retirement program costs, civilian retirement decisions, and retirement income. GAO wished to determine to what extent the models have been documented, to what extent the models are…

A sequential decision-making approach based on college grade point averages and test scores for teacher licensure decisions within the conjunctive model is contrasted with the compensatory model for decision making. Criteria for choosing one model over another and a rationale for favoring the conjunctive model are provided. (TJH)

Narrative reviews have raised several questions regarding the predictive validity of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 2003) and related scales in institutional settings. In this meta-analysis, the authors coded 273 effect sizes to investigate the association between the Hare scales and a hierarchy of increasingly specific…

The interest inventory of the Harrington-O'Shea Career Decision-Making System (T. F. Harrington & A. J. O'Shea, 1980, 1992, 2003) had hit rates of occupational status substantially exceeding chance expectations in the literature's 1st long-term predictive validity study since 1991. No significant gender differences were found for the Grade 10…

A study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine evaluated the predictive value of the rank list generated in evaluating applicants for a surgery residency. Rough rankings computed directly from ratings of applicants were found to be more predictive of first year residents' performance than faculty's final rankings…

This paper examines possible explanations for the fact that evaluation results are rarely used. Most explanatory factors for use of results in decision making mentioned in the literature have been clustered in three categories of variables. They concern: (1) the making of decisions about the practical problem; (2) the way in which evaluation is…

A new computer-based approach for teaching counselors about predictive validity and how to use tests in clinical decision making was developed and tested. The approach is based on concepts similar to those used in inferential statistics, particularly statistical hypothesis testing. To implement this model, the counselor must: (1) determine the…

Data from the Canadian Test of English for Scholars and Trainees (CanTEST) are compared to data from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to establish CanTEST as a valid admissions tool for English-as-a-Second Language college applicants. Data are taken from four groups of examinees who took both tests. (eight references) (LR)