The questionnaires or course evaluation forms (CEF) are routinely administered to university students to obtain information about the quality of courses and instructor effectiveness. There is an extensive variety of formats but many use a combination of Likert-type items and open-ended questions. Percentages, but more often means and standard…

The percentage of universities using student ratings to evaluate teacher performance is steadily increasing, but this method can be abused if it is the sole criterion of evaluation. Recent surveys of faculty attitudes towards teaching evaluation indicate that most faculty members are in favor of systematic evaluation, prefer student ratings to…

The problems associated with misclassifying students when pass-fail decisions are based on test scores are discussed. One protection against misclassification is to set a confidence interval around the cutting score. Those whose scores fall above the interval are passed; those whose scores fall below the interval are failed; and those whose scores…

The feasibility of standardized assessment of features of children's organization of knowledge and the demonstration of differences in organization between stages of development were investigated. It was possible to standardize developmentally derived instruments, in the same way as empirically derived tests because such evaluations concern the…

This paper argues that (1) as measures of emotional empathy in children are refined, there is increasingly strong support for the hypothesis that emotional empathy can serve both as an inhibitor of antisocial behavior and as a motivator of prosocial behavior, but that (2) since the relation between children's empathy and their behavior is…

What began as a review of Pass-Fail ended as a comment on the evaluation schema of student academic performance. "Standards,""Evaluation" and "Grades" are defined. A brief history of grading among early North American institutions of higher learning is compared to precursory practices in Europe. The validity and reliability of traditional grades…

The analysis reported here examined the progress of observational child study from 1960 through 1975. Naturalistic observational studies were described as heuristic, highly realistic, relevant to important social problems and oriented toward significant theoretical issues. Fifteen journals encompassing child development, clinical and educational…

The current capabilities of Federal Agencies to measure the extent to which minorities receive the benefits of Federal domestic assistance programs were evaluated by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The use and collection of racial and ethnic data; responsibility for racial and ethnic data collection and use; and the legal issues of authority,…

Performance in concrete and abstract tasks is examined systematically by varying the degree of abstractness of problem-solving and concept formation tasks. Four forms of a problem solving test were constructed. Each form of the test presented problem situations through four different modes: verbal stories, picture-book, color slides,…

This study further develops the Diagnostic Survey for Leadership Improvement (DSLI) and determines its reliability and validity. Split-half estimates of the DSLI's reliability were computed. These estimates came in terms of the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients that were then corrected by the Spearman-Brown Prophesy Formula. The…

The Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) program requires states to establish systems for identifying Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants likely to exhaust their UI benefits and refers them to reemployment services. An evaluation was conducted to assess the reliability of the impact estimates provided in the evaluation of the WPRS…

The Raising Quality and Achievement Program is a 3-year initiative to support further education (FE) colleges in the United Kingdom in their drive to improve students' achievement and the quality of provision. The program offers the following: (1) quality information and advice; (2) onsite support for individual colleges; (3) help with…

Racial differences in the reporting accuracy of parental status characteristics by White and Black high school seniors were investigated using Joreskog's general framework for simultaneous covariance structure analyses of multiple populations. Reliability estimates for Whites were significantly higher than for Blacks due to differences in true…

Tested links between early adolescent older sibling (OS) and younger sibling (YS) competence in rural African American families. Found that OS competence was stable across time and related to improvements in mothers' psychological functioning from Wave 1 to Wave 2. Mothers' Wave-2 psychological functioning related to Wave-3 involved-supportive…

A study found that the admission interview scores for 62 Dartmouth Medical School (New Hampshire) applicants correlated positively with dean's letter ratings given 4 years later and that interview scores were better predictors of ratings than were total Medical College Admission Test scores or science grade point averages. (Author/MSE)