Currently, the most common measurement of empathy is obtained using scales that offer a continuum between a minimum and a maximum value. The objectives of this study were to establish a norm and estimate cut-off points that would make it possible to assess the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) version for Health Professions students (HPS-version),…

Measuring the quality of classroom-based interactive shared book reading within the early childhood classroom represents a specific dimension of teacher-child interactions that is of great interest to researchers. This interest reflects decades of research demonstrating the benefit of reading to young children in both the home and the classroom.…

The Multicultural Counseling and Psychotherapy Test (MCPT), a measure of multicultural counseling competence (MCC), was validated in 2 phases. In Phase 1, the authors administered 451 test items derived from multicultural guidelines in counseling and psychology to 32 multicultural experts and 30 nonexperts. In Phase 2, the authors administered the…

The Scylla and Charybdis in this discussion of teacher evaluation are standardized achievement test data on the one hand, and classroom observational systems on the other. These are the two most common methods used to judge teachers' competency. Both have serious flaws: the former primarily with validity, the latter primarily with reliability. At…

This study investigated the cognitive validity of two child English language tests. Some teachers maintain that these types of tests may be cognitively invalid because native-English-speaking children would not do well on them (Winke, 2011). So the researchers had native speakers and learners of English aged 7 to 9 take sample versions of two…

Participation in shared-reading experiences is associated with children's language and literacy outcomes, yet few standardized assessments of shared-reading quality exist. The purpose of this study was to describe the psychometric characteristics of the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR), an observational tool designed to characterize…

Standardizing aspects of assessments has long been recognized as a tactic to help make evaluations of examinees fair. It reduces variation in irrelevant aspects of testing procedures that could advantage some examinees and disadvantage others. However, recent attention to making assessment accessible to a more diverse population of students…

The present study examined the technical adequacy of curriculum-based measures (CBMs) of early numeracy. Six 1-min early mathematics tasks were administered to 137 kindergarten and first-grade students, along with an omnibus test of early mathematics. The CBM measures included Count Out Loud, Quantity Discrimination, Number Identification, Missing…

The core critical thinking skills, identified in "The Delphi Report" as essential elements for workplace and educational success, are targeted in a standardized 35 item multiple-choice assessment tool entitled the "Test of Everyday Reasoning (TER)" which is designed to provide a representation of a person's overall critical…

This dissertation reports development and validation studies of a Web-based standardized test of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL), designed to measure learners' off-line grammatical and pragmatic knowledge in multiple-choice format. Targeting Japanese majors in the U.S. universities and colleges, the test is designed to explore possible…

Discusses the problem of measuring the validity of interview ratings in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI), proposes frameworks to distinguish abilities from testing methods, and considers factors affecting test performance. Suggestions for research and development on the ACTFL OPI…

Rasch calibration procedures were applied to item-response data for the 1,262 infants and toddlers comprising the standardization sample for the Mental Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Analyses tend to confirm the psychometric integrity of the instrument. (Author)

An overview of the research needed on the new Test of Written English (TWE), a section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), looks at research needs in the areas of test validity, test reliability, topic development, and equating. Suggested topics for study include: the uniqueness of the construct measured by the test, in…

In this article, we review some of the ways socioeconomic status has been measured on assessments and the issues associated with measuring SES of students, issues which are not limited to statistical concerns. We also present possible proxy measures that could be used as a means of potentially overcoming some of the problems with current measures…

The keylist format (rather than the conventional multiple-choice format) for item presentation provides a machine-scorable surrogate for a truly free-response test. In this format, the examinee is required to think of an answer, look it up in a long ordered list, and enter its number on an answer sheet. The introduction of keylist items into…