The measurement of sensation seeking has been mired in controversy since Zukerman defined it. The sensation seeking personality trait (SSPT) eliminates many of the psychometric issues found in previous scales and may allow researchers to better understand the role of sensation seeking in the engagement in health risk behaviors.

Popular teamwork assessments have been strongly criticized on the grounds of poor psychometric properties and their disconnect with conceptual models of teamwork. These issues raise concerns with respect to our ability to evaluate efforts devoted to advancing teamwork in academia. We report the development of a teamwork assessment that builds on…

There is growing interest in perfectionism among children and adolescents as well as growing interest in the measures designed to assess perfectionism in young people. The current article describes the development and psychometric characteristics of the Child-Adolescent Perfectionism Scale (CAPS), a measure that assesses self-oriented…

Approximately 30% of students drop out from Norwegian upper secondary schools. Academic achievement, as indexed by grade point average (GPA), is one of the strongest predictors of dropout. The present study aimed to examine the role of cognitive, school-related and affective/psychological predictors of GPA. In addition, we examined the…

A short form of the MMPI, the Improved Readability Form (IRF), was shown to contain items that were more readable, more stable, and less ambiguous than excluded items. Results suggest that the IRF may function as well as available short forms with persons of normal and near normal intelligence. (Author)

With the rise of violent teenage crime, with an alarming number of child soldiers across the globe, and with the continually increasing number of children and adolescents who are victimized by violence and war, an instrument that measures nonviolent tendencies would be very useful. The Teenage Nonviolence Test (TNT) was recently developed and…

This research study was designed to establish the reliability of the Teenage Nonviolence Test (TNT). The consistency and factor structure of the TNT using a sample of 376 adolescents were evaluated. The stability of the TNT was assessed over time by administering the TNT twice with a two week intervening interval to 87 adolescents. The TNT appears…

A new method--similar to Christoffersson's--for the factor analysis of dichotomous variables uses information from the first and second order proportions to fit a multiple factor model. The estimation is considerably simplified. Items from Rotter's locus of control inventory are included. (Author/JKS)

Most methods of personality scale construction have clear statistical disadvantages. A hybrid method (Darlington and Bishop, 1966) was found to increase scale validity more than any other method, with large item pools. A simple modification of the Darlington-Bishop method (algebraically and conceptually similar to ridge regression, but…

A collection of 50 articles comprising guidelines for use of career assessment instruments by school counselors is provided. Topics addressed include: the nature of the guide, the counselor's role in career assessment, selection of career assessment instruments, interpretation of psychometric instruments in career counseling, and testing…

A study operationalized and measured the construct of communicator motivation, defined as an affective tendency to approach and become involved in communication, as part of an effort to clarify the concept and to begin validation of a new scale to measure it. The study addressed two specific motives: concern for promoting self and concern for…

Describes the development of a research tool, the Occupational Identity Scale, to study one dimension of ego-identity development (occupational dimension), with 417 college and high school students validating items. Identified four factors which accounted for 49 percent of the total variance. Reliability coefficients ranged between 0.70 and 0.87,…

Measures used at the Division of Developmental Studies at the University of Georgia in constructing a student profile (specifically, of high-risk college freshmen) are discussed. The areas measured concern: goals; learning styles; career exploration; stress and academic anxiety; developmental tasks; and locus of control. The goals checklist…