The study of capital juries remains a subject of critical interest for the public and for legislative and judicial policy makers as well as legal scholars and social scientists. Cowan, Thompson, and Ellsworth established one of the standard methodologies for examination of this topic in their 1984 seminal study by observing the subjects' debate…

This study investigated the elicited imitation task (EIT) as a tool for measuring linguistic proficiency in a second/foreign (L2) language, focusing on French. Nonnative French speakers (n = 94) and native French speakers (n = 6) completed an EIT that included 50 sentences varying in length and complexity. Three raters evaluated productions on…

Human raters are normally involved in L2 performance assessment; as a result, rater behavior has been widely investigated to reduce rater effects on test scores and to provide validity arguments. Yet raters' cognition and use of rubrics in their actual rating have rarely been explored qualitatively in L2 speaking assessments. In this study three…

Objective: This study examines the relative relationships of self- and other-reports of adult ADHD symptoms to important life competencies, and also investigates whether self- and other-reports of ADHD symptoms are differentially associated with interrater differences in reports of competence. Method: A total of 91 women completed a…

Program and /or course evaluation is a process in which different types of data are collected systematically in order to study the virtues and weaknesses of a language instruction program. Program evaluation is, in fact, one of the essential aspects of any curriculum. It is a kind of quality control in which various aspects of an instructional…

No self-report measure of cultural competence currently exists in program evaluation. Adapting items from cultural competence measures in fields such as counseling and nursing, the researchers developed the Cultural Competence of Program Evaluators (CCPE) self-report scale. The goals of this study were to validate the CCPE and to assess…

The oral examination is an important component of the high-stakes "O" Level examination in Singapore taken by 16-17 year olds whose first language may or may not be English. In spite of this, there has been sparse research into the examination. This paper reports findings of an exploratory study which attempted to determine whether there…

Maintaining standards over time is a much debated topic in the context of national examinations in the UK. This study used a pilot method to compare the demands, over time, of two examination units testing administration. The method involved 15 experts revising a framework of demand types and making paired comparisons of examinations from…

This paper describes a study comparing paper-based marking (PBM) and onscreen marking (OSM) in Hong Kong utilising English language essay scripts drawn from the live 2007 Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) Year 11 English Language Writing Paper. In the study, 30 raters from the 2007 HKCEE Writing Paper marked on paper 100…

This study focused on the impact of oral dialogue journals on Iranian EFL learners' pronunciation. Three classes of intermediate learners, after being reassured of their homogeneity, were randomly assigned to treatment (14 students), control (9 students), and placebo (10 students) groups. Learners in the treatment group had to respond to the…

An interjudge reliability test was conducted to evaluate questionnaires used in the surveillance of residential care institutions in Israel. Results from 32 institutions (evaluated by two surveyor teams--one social worker and 1 nurse per team) and the variance in reliability were used to improve the questionnaires and their administration. (SLD)

A checklist of characteristics of effective mail questionnaires was developed that reflects some degree of consensus among experts in survey research and that can serve as a guide to novices designing a questionnaire. Journal and book sources of information about mail questionnaires were reviewed to yield 83 items in 7 categories that comprised…

The reliability of a 13-item questionnaire designed to assess the humanistic behaviors of internal medicine residents and the reliability of nurses as raters of those behaviors were examined. Residents were evaluated by nurses on two general medicine services and on cardiology and hematology-oncology services. (Author/MLW)

This paper provides an understanding of the conceptual and operational relationships between evaluation, content analysis, and microcomputers so that evaluation practitioners can better address applied content analysis problems used in their work. The first section presents a general model for conducting an evaluation effort that focuses on…

In 1990, a study was conducted at Rio Hondo College (Whittier, California) to determine if readers exhibited any bias in scoring test papers that were composed on a word processor as opposed to being written by hand. The study began with the formulation of tentative pilot study questions and the development of procedures to address them. Three…