Scores on the Career Decision Difficulties Questionnaire for 268 college students (86 classified as undecided) showed convergence with the Career Decision Scale. The questionnaire's discriminant validity was confirmed in the areas of social desirability and anxiety. There were statistically significant differences between decided and undecided…

Discusses issues related to course evaluation and reliable feedback from students in distance education. Considers features that should be taken into account in the design and development of an evaluation instrument, including contemporary theoretical principles in distance education; contemporary critical practices in the field; and ascertaining…

Discusses personal innovativeness, perceived organizational innovativeness, and computer anxiety in relation to distance education. Investigates the reliability of measures used in relevant research studies, including the Innovativeness Scale, Perceived Organizational Innovativeness Scale, and Computer Anxiety Index. (Contains 12 references.) (LRW)

High school seniors (n=474), high school freshmen (n=1,153), salespersons (n=374), sheet metal workers (n=148), sheet metal applicants (n=424), and carpenter applicants (n=279) were used to test the short-form Ball Aptitude Battery (BAB). The development of the short-form BAB indicates comparable results to the long-form BAB in terms of…

Adolescents (n=99) with learning disabilities were administered the Test of Memory and Learning (TOMAL) (C. Reynolds and E. Bigler, 1994), and Cronbach's alpha was calculated based on their responses. Alpha values were also computed for a control group. TOMAL performance of adolescents with learning disabilities tends to be as reliable as…

Discusses sampling bias problems in the use of the greatest lower bound (g.l.b.) to reliability and offers explicit expressions for the second order derivatives. This yields closed form expression for the asymptotic bias of both the g.l.b. and its numerator. Illustrates the approach through a numeric example. (SLD)

Undergraduate students (N=264) completed the Parent and Peer Influence Scale (PPI). The scale demonstrated strong reliability as well as face and concurrent validity. The PPI can be used both by researchers to address contradictions in the literature, as well as clinicians seeking to evaluate levels of peer influence in a family. (Author/MKA)

Examined intra- and inter-rater consistency of item performance estimated from an Angoff standard setting over 2 years, with 29 panelists one year, and 30 the next. Results provide evidence that item performance estimates were consistent within and across panels within and across years. Factors that might have influenced this high degree of…

In 4 treatment groups, college students (n=115) made judgments of favorable and unfavorable occupations using Kelly's Role Construct Repertory Test. One week later they rerated their individual lists of 12 occupations and the constructs provided or elicited from them. Although reliabilities were moderately high, there was considerable variability…

Explores the heuristic value of a typological approach for preventing and studying school dropout. Empirically builds a typology of dropouts based on individual school experiences, tests the typology's reliability by replicating the classification with two different longitudinal samples, and examines the typology's predictive and discriminant…

Derives the asymptotic normal distribution of the maximum likelihood estimator of Cronbach's alpha (under normality) for the case when no assumptions are made about the covariances among items. Also considers the asymptotic distribution for the special case of compound symmetry and when compared to the exact distribution. (Author/SLD)

This study examined the feasibility of using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in auditory research by testing the reliability of scanning parameters using high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios. Findings indicated reproducibility within and across listeners for consonant-vowel speech stimuli and reproducible results within and…

Describes a structural equation model that permits estimation of the reliability index and coefficient of a composite index for congeneric measures. The method is also helpful in exploring the factorial structure of an item set, and its use in scale reliability estimation and development is illustrated. (SLD)

Submitted the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS) (F. Richardson and R. Suinn, 1972) to a reliability generalization analysis to characterize the variability of measurement error in MARS scores across administrations and identify characteristics predictive of score reliability variations. Results for 67 analyses generally support the internal…

Evaluated the alternate forms reliability of new versus old tasks of the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS) (A. Fisher, 1993). Participants were 44 persons from the AMPS database. Results support good alternate forms reliability of the motor and process ability measures and suggest that the newly calibrated tasks can be used reliably in…