Research indicates that the media play a role in shaping the information that voters have about election options. Knowledge of those options has been related to actual vote, but has not been shown to be strongly related to uncertainty. Uncertainty, however, does seem to motivate voters to engage in communication activities, some of which may…

A study examined the extent of the role communication encounters play in helping people make accurate predictions about others, and what types of communicators (in terms of communicative reponsiveness and gender) seem to profit most from interaction with the subject of prediction prior to making predictions. Subjects, 118 college students,…

Using data collected in 95 Ohio school districts by Brock Hunt, this study reanalyzed those data, examined the reasons for Hunt's inability to predict a school board member incumbent's defeat, and developed a model that would have predicted those Ohio school board elections. Hunt attempted to develop a statistical model of socioeconomic-political…

The presence of differences between prediction systems for males and females is investigated through a detailed study of clerical specialties in the Marine Corps. When various aptitude composites are used to predict success of recruits in training, sizeable differences in regression functions are found between male and female groups. The paper…

Identification and explication of construct relationships, under conditions of extraneous variable control in multiple regression and its multivariate analog, canonical analysis, were studied. Several data models were generated as a function of the interaction of partial correlation and orthogonal linear transformations on nursing examination…

This study investigated the predictive validity of the admission criteria for masters students in reading: undergraduate grade point average (GPA), Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores, undergraduate college quality, and age. Data were gathered for 94 former masters students at Rutgers University, including 53 who had obtained the M.Ed. and 41…

Reports a study that evaluated the efficacy of a nonranking grading system in assessing superior performance. (JT)

A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education (Chicago, February 10, 1968).

Learned helplessness has recently incorporated attribution theory to predict the specific occurrence/nonoccurrence of the motivational, cognitive and affective deficits characteristic of helplessness. College students (N=50) participated in a study to investigate the effects of a personal-universal helplessness manipulation on subsequent task…

Some early childhood variables are examined to evaluate their predictive validity. The selection of children needing early childhood Title I services is complicated by the lack of criteria for defining who is educationally disadvantaged and the special problems of early childhood testing and measurement. The study used re-analysis of longitudinal…

The predictive validity of the equation used for determining entrance into the University of Washington's freshman class during the 1978-79 academic year is examined. The sample was comprised of all freshmen entering the university directly from high school in autumn quarter 1974 who had been tested through the Washington Pre-College Test Battery…

Ridge regression is presented as an analytic technique to be used when predictor variables in a multiple linear regression situation are highly correlated, a situation which may result in unstable regression coefficients and difficulties in interpretation. Ridge regression avoids the problem of selection of variables that may occur in stepwise…

The utility of multiple discriminant analysis in predicting career interests in six specialities of engineering--aeronautical, chemical, civil, electrical, industrial and mechanical engineering--was studied. Freshman engineers at Purdue University were administered the Purdue Interest Questionnaire (PIQ). Multiple discriminant analysis was…

Psychometric evaluations of the assessment center method of personnel selection have consistently shown positive results. However, this approach ignores certain external parameters (e.g., selection ratio, cost of the procedure) which largely determine the overall utility of a selection device. Moreover, the psychometric evaluation approach ignores…