Although International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement-pioneered international large-scale assessment (ILSA) of education is now a well-established science, non-practitioners and many users often substantially misunderstand how large-scale assessments are conducted, what questions and challenges they are designed to…

Use of Tukey's Jackknife in establishing a confidence interval around the population coefficient alpha is explored and the robustness of Feldt's procedure along with ten variants of the Jackknife when the data do not conform to the necessary normality requirements are evaluated. Only two of the variants compared to Feldt's approach. (RC)

The purpose of this paper is to prove that one currently recommended method of obtaining the reliability of an instrument defined on a population of aggregate units is invalid. This method randomly splits the aggregate into two halves, correlates the two half unit scores by a Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, and corrects the…

Details of a reasonably precise normalization technique for coefficient alpha are outlined, along with methods for estimating the variance of the normalized statistic. These procedures lead to the K-sample significance test. (RC)

The adequacy of equipercentile, linear, one-parameter (Rasch), and three-parameter logistic item-response theory procedures for equating 12 forms of five tests of general educational development were compared. Results indicated the equating method adequacy depends on a variety of factors such as test characteristics, equating design, and sample…

With the increasing globalization of human resources practices, a commensurate increase in demand has occurred for multi-language ("global") personality norms for use in selection and development efforts. The combination of data from multiple translations of a personality assessment into a single norm engenders error from multiple sources. This…

The statistical properties of two methods of estimating gain scores for groups in quasi-experiments are compared: (1) gains in scores standardized separately for each group; and (2) analysis of covariance with estimated true pretest scores. The fan spread hypothesis is assumed for groups but not necessarily assumed for members of the groups.…

This interim report of a pilot year impact study on evaluation methodology is part of a series of documents on the evaluation of Project Developmental Continuity, a Head Start demonstration program aimed at promoting educational and developmental continuity between children's Head Start and primary school experiences. This report deals with…

Three approaches to the construction of achievement tests are compared: construct, operational, and empirical. The construct approach is based upon classical test theory and measures an abstract representation of the instructional objectives. The operational approach specifies instructional intent through instructional objectives, facet design,…