Social skills and academic competence are key factors influencing children's development and functioning across early childhood and through adolescence. There is a great need to understand the longitudinal patterns of growth in social and academic skills in order to further inform intervention, particularly for at-risk groups such as individuals…

The purposes of this study were to develop a culture specific critical thinking ability test for 6, 7, and 8. grade students in Turkey and to use it as an assessment instrument for giftedness. For these purposes, item pool involving 22 items was formed by writing items focusing on the current and common events presented in (Turkish) media from…

Examinees (N=1,233) at the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (JOCRF) were administered one of three test forms in which only item order differed. The study was undertaken to determine the validity of the assumption underlying item response theory (IRT) that there are fixed item parameters that can predict performance. The Rasch IRT model was…