The general feeling is that no predictions can be made based on agent-based social simulations. The outcomes of social simulations are based on the behaviors of individuals and their interactions. Behavioral models are always incomplete and often, also incorrect with respect to real behavior and thus the outcomes of agent-based social simulations…

The UCLA National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) is under contract from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) to conduct research on assessment models and tools designed to support Marine Corps rifle marksmanship. In this deliverable, we first review the literature on known-distance rifle marksmanship…

Many have elaborated on the potential of virtual reality (VR) in learning. This article attempts at organizing the literature in this issue in order to better identify indicators that can account for future valid trends, and seeks to bring to attention how authors who wrote about the future of VR in education confused futures' terms and produced…

The use of microworlds (MWs), or complex dynamic systems, in educational testing and personnel selection is hampered by systematic measurement errors because these new and innovative item formats are not adequately controlled for their difficulty. This empirical study introduces a way to operationalize an MW's difficulty and demonstrates the…

This paper presents an analysis of the stability of principal components. Stability is measured by the expectation of the absolute inner product of the sample principal component with the corresponding population component. The usefulness and predictive validity of the model were supported through simulation. (SLD)

Psychometric evaluations of the assessment center method of personnel selection have consistently shown positive results. However, this approach ignores certain external parameters (e.g., selection ratio, cost of the procedure) which largely determine the overall utility of a selection device. Moreover, the psychometric evaluation approach ignores…

Attempts to improve a set of patient assault vignettes for a simulation by developing and testing a control version of the vignettes and exploring additional question and alternative scoring procedures. Influences of victim gender and assault severity are examined for 58 neuropsychiatric hospital nurses and 12 mental health experts. (SLD)