This paper will deal, firstly, with the South African context, that cries out for attention to responsible language assessment. The renewed interest in language testing in South Africa is well illustrated in assessments of language ability for educational purposes generally, and more specifically in the assessment of academic literacy. Secondly,…

Current taxonomies of intelligence comprise two factors of mental speed, clerical speed (Gs), and elementary cognitive speed (Gt). Both originated from different research traditions and are conceptualized as dissociable constructs in current taxonomies. However, previous research suggests that tasks of one category can be transferred into the…

This study examined the equivalence and reliability of the two versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test in an Iranian context. This study was motivated by the fact that the Vocabulary Levels test is increasingly being used in Iran for both research and pedagogical purposes without having been checked for validity and reliability in this context. The…

Background: Sentence construction and syntactic organization are known to be poor in children with specific language impairments (SLI), but little is known about the way in which children with SLI approach language tasks, and static standardized tests contribute little to the differentiation of skills within the population of children with…

Demands for accountability have seen the implementation of large scale testing programs in Australia and internationally. There is, however, a growing body of evidence to show that externally imposed testing programs do not have a sustained impact on student achievement. It has been argued that teacher assessment is more effective in raising…

A conventional way to analyze item responses in multiple tests is to apply unidimensional item response models separately, one test at a time. This unidimensional approach, which ignores the correlations between latent traits, yields imprecise measures when tests are short. To resolve this problem, one can use multidimensional item response models…

Forty elementary students were administered the Bender-Gestalt Test using two techniques: Koppitz routine instructions and the Hutt testing-the-limits method. The mean number of Koppitz errors was approximately two greater than the number obtained using the Hutt technique. (Author/BW)

Game-like and test-like methods of divergent thinking assessment were compared with 10-year olds. Effects of method on score correlates were sufficient to allow the possibility that method may be implicated in outcomes of many studies of divergent thinking. (Author)

During the past decade both the Guilford and Torrence groups have developed numerable measures to assess creative potential. Many of these measures purport to evaluate "creativity" but one element seems to be lacking in each: i.e., the last of "reality-based, real world measures" which would allow relevant response tendencies…

How well an aptitude test battery predicts rated job performance for Negroes and whites, and how well a battery selected for one group predicts performance for the other, is examined. Supervisory ratings were used as the criterion of job performance. Tests selected to predict performance in the job of Medical Laboratory technicians were validated…

To test the validity of brief measures of intelligence and explore how well these instruments relate to academic performance, the WPPSI-R, the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Scale, Draw-A-Person: Quantitative Scoring System, and the K-ABC Achievement Scale were administered to 50 kindergarten and first-grade children. Results indicated all measures…

The lack of a suitable research instrument on attitudes of elementary school children toward school and subject matters has limited the quality and extent of research on school attitudes. The Affective Reporting System was conceived to fill this need. It consists of two instruments--ME and What I Like Best (WILB), each possessing two versions:…

We are concerned with the hypothesis that two variables have a perfect disattenuated correlation, hence measure the same trait except for errors of measurement. This hypothesis is equivalent to saying, within the adopted model, that true scores of two psychological tests satisfy a linear relation. A statistical test of this hypothesis is derived…

A procedure for in-depth analysis of a limited number of tests being considered for selection by a school, district, project, or state personnel is described. This procedure involves listing the objectives that it would be desirable to measure determining the relative importance of each of these objectives, having "judges" match test items to…