Assessments of marital interaction during conflict resolution obtained when children were five-years-old predicted teachers' ratings of children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors when the children were eight-years-old. In particular, the "Mutually Hostile" marital interaction pattern correlated with later marital dissolution…

A review of 47 health care education research articles in 9 medical and health care disciplines looked for evidence that the studies attempted to predict success in the health care professions. Results indicated very few of the studies used any of the three major methods for testing predictive validity. (Author/MSE)

A new statistical model based for identifying potential major donors was developed from a portion (n=53,276) of the Northwestern University (Illinois) alumni database. The model, utilizing logit analysis, found that the most critical measure was individuals' past giving records. Results indicate prospects with a low past giving level will rarely…

Examines various psychodynamic and behavioral theories in a discussion about obesity and mental health. It is revealed that modern theory finds no identifiable personality profile, behavior, or family structure influencing large weight gain thus discounting psychopathology as the cause of obesity. Individual assessments for causes of obesity are…

A study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY) found that performance on examinations during the third month of medical school was highly predictive of performance during the first two years of medical school. This predictor was more powerful than Medical College Admission Test scores and/or undergraduate grade point averages in…

Assesses the accuracy of Riverside Community College's entry-level assessment and placement practice, correlating reading and language assessment scores with grades in freshman composition and student demographics. Concludes that ASSET test scores alone were not strong predictors of student success and other data sources should be considered as…

Demonstrates that selection benefits of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) are minimal. Demonstrates that the Crosstabulation of Predicted Grades and the College Outcomes Tables would allow colleges to identify the level of redundancy in predicted admissions based on high school grade point average and to estimate the impact of the SAT on…

This study examined informal phonological awareness measures as predictors of first-grade broad reading ability with 91 former Head Start students. Regression analyses indicted that three phonological awareness tasks (invented spelling, categorization, and blending) were the most predictive of standardized reading measures obtained at the end of…

Analyzes simulated performance ratings on a six-point scale by two independent raters to account for nonsystematic error in performance ratings. Results suggest that rater agreement or covariance is not always a dependable estimate of score reliability and that the practice of seeking additional raters for adjudication of discrepant ratings is not…

It is well-known that for normally distributed errors parametric tests are optimal statistically, but perhaps less well-known is that when normality does not hold, nonparametric tests frequently possess greater statistical power than parametric tests, while controlling Type I error rate. However, the use of nonparametric procedures has been…

Whether hierarchical logistic regression can reduce the sample size requirement for estimating optimal cutoff scores in a course placement service where predictive validity is measured by a threshold utility function is explored. Data from courses with varying class size were randomly partitioned into two halves per course. Nonhierarchical and…

To examine the predictive utility of three scales provided in the released database of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (international plausible values, standardized percent correct score, and national Rasch score), information was obtained on the performance in state examinations in mathematics and science in 1996…

Exact nonparametric procedures have been used to identify the level of differential item functioning (DIF) in binary items. This study explored the use of exact DIF procedures with items scored on a Likert scale. The results from an attitude survey suggest that the large-sample Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel (CMH) procedure identifies more items as…

Approximately seven years after completing a photographic essay about the self, 44 adults were surveyed about their lives, current creative activities, and their work values. In accord with prediction, those who devised richer, more multidimensional and creative photo essays--the more individualistic--were engaged in more creative lifestyles as…

Investigations that focus on children's hand gestures often conclude that gesture production arises as a result of having multiple representations. To date, the predictive validity of this notion has not been tested. In this study, we compared the gestures of 82 five-year-old children holding either a single or a dual representation. The children…