The researcher, who pretests a questionnaire conventionally, is confident that a small number of interviews reveals numerous problems afflict the questionnaire. The standardized interviewer is asked to observe respondent's verbal behaviors in order to realize whether respondent misunderstands question. But this strategy fails when respondent does…

Retrospective pretests ask respondents to report after an intervention on their aptitudes, knowledge, or beliefs before the intervention. A primary reason to administer a retrospective pretest is that in some situations, program participants may over the course of an intervention revise or recalibrate their prior understanding of program content,…

The relationship between a subject's awareness of the intent of the experimenter and attitude change is investigated. (PR)

A pre-testing orientation was incorporated into the Work Incentives Program, a pre-vocational program for disadvantaged youth. Test-taking skills were taught in seven and one half hours of instruction and a variety of methods were used to provide a sequential experience with distributed learning, positive reinforcement, and immediate feedback of…

A pretest-posttest design for measuring the effects of educational programs uses comparison groups consisting of pupils like those in the treatment group but not getting that particular treatment. Although the design is geared primarily to evaluation of Title I programs in large cities, it should also apply to other situations. The plan for…

Examines two common errors in evaluation and ways to circumvent them. The first error is faulty pretesting or diagnostic evaluation. The second is failure to monitor student progress and plan instruction in relation to the specified learning goals. (SJL)

This study focused on two questions: (1) whether the types of study-aid test, or the levels of test anxiety would affect the level of performance on the test under non-anxious conditions; and (2) whether there would be any interaction effect between the types of study-aid test and the levels of anxiety under non-anxious conditions. Twelve female…

Criterion-referenced proficiency examinations have been prepared for entry level occupational therapists and entry level occupational therapy assistants. Item development was based on a task inventory solicited from occupational therapists throughout the country, with six occupational therapists reviewing test development. A small scale pilot test…

The biasing effects of a pretest on subsequent post-test results were investigated in two experimental studies. In general, the results argue for using designs without pretests. (Author/JKS)

The effects of student teaching and the pretesting of attitudes on student teachers' attitudes were studied. Results suggested that pretesting of attitudes was detrimental to attitude improvement. Appropriate designs for assessing changes in attitudes were discussed. (Author/MH)

Field tests of test items are useful in developing cutting scores for important tests, such as teacher certification examinations and high school graduation tests, because they indicate test item quality and estimate future examinee performance. However, field test data may provide a faulty indication of examinee performance on the real test.…

A study was conducted to determine if the observed changes in Head Start children were related to the practice effects inherent in a test-retest situation. The "control" group consisted of 64 children who had been eligible for a Head Start program. They roughly matched a group of Head Start (HS) children in IQ scores, age, and…

To determine the long-run impact of the CERLI training program, the trainees' abilities to function as Specialists in Continuing Education (SCE) had to be measured and assessed. This assessment is a followup to "Assessment of the CERLI Training Program Specialist in Continuing Education" (EA 002 706). The document reports on attempts to…

Problems which should be considered in relation to performance contracting include: legal problems, time for planning, teachers' objections, and measuremet problems. Advantages include: the learning experience of planning, Hawthorne effect excitement, and the low cost of this experimentation. (MS)

A computer simulation procedure was developed to reproduce the overall pattern of results obtained in the Educational Testing Service Growth Study. Then simulated data for seven sets of 10,000 to 15,000 cases were analyzed, and findings compared on the basis of correlations between estimated and true growth scores. Findings showed that growth was…