Looks at the use of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the most widely used test to assess the English language proficiency of students applying to colleges and universities in the United States or Canada. Examines the TOEFL in relation to backwash, reliability, administration, validity, and ethics. (Author/VWL)

Establishes a Kenyan standardization of the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM), a nonverbal instrument widely used to assess academic aptitude in young children. Data was gathered from a sample of 1,370 children between the ages of 6 and 10 years. Using the current data, the RCPM appears to be a reliable and valid instrument for use in…

Although instructional methods are moving in ever greater number to a multimedia base, testing is not. What principles should be considered in correcting this misalignment?

Kowalski and Zimiles (2006) and O'Hanlon and Roberson (2006) address an age-old question: Why do children find it difficult to learn color terms? Here these articles are reflected on, providing a focused examination of the issues central to this question. First, the criteria by which children are said to find color naming difficult are considered.…

Psychometric theory focuses primarily on tests that are homogeneous, measuring only one attribute of a psychosocial entity. However, the complexity of psychosocial behavior often requires tests that are heterogeneous, measuring more than one attribute. In this presentation, reliability and internal consistency are extended to heterogeneous tests…

A self-report inventory for the assessment of mindfulness skills was developed, and its psychometric characteristics and relationships with other constructs were examined. Participants included three samples of undergraduate students and a sample of outpatients with borderline personality disorder. Based on discussions of mindfulness in the…

A reliability generalization of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) was conducted using the normative sample. The RCMAS consists of a Total Anxiety scale as well as four subscales. Results suggest that the Total Anxiety scores are typically reliable (median across 48 samples = .81). Subscale scores were less reliable: The median…

The metric equivalence of translated scales is often in question but seldom examined. This study presents test-retest data that support the metric equivalence of the Spanish and English language versions of three measures: the Bidimensional Acculturation Scale, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, and the Self-Construal Scale. Participants were…

This study examined the test-retest reliability and the concurrent validity of the 17-scale Expanded Skills Confidence Inventory in samples of 321 and 175 college students. Retest values over a 3-week interval ranged from .77 to .89, with a median of .85. Using Brown and Gore's C-index, evidence for the concurrent validity of confidence score…

Test reliability is a concept central to classical test theory and it is commonly stated as a requirement that a test attain a certain level of reliability before it be considered of sufficient quality for practical use. This article discusses the role of reliability in item response theory, and in particular the role of reliability in contexts…

Purpose: To provide educationalists with an understanding of the key quality issues relating to multiple-choice tests, and a set of guidelines for the quality assurance of such tests. Design/methodology/approach: The discussion of quality issues is structured to reflect the order in which those issues naturally arise. It covers the design of…

Within the field of psychological assessment, the Wechsler scales continue to be the most widely used intelligence batteries. The concepts, methods, and procedures inherent in the design of the Wechsler scales have been so influential that they have guided most of the test development and research in the field for more than a half century. This…

In this study, the authors examined the stability of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--2 (J. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 1989) code types in a sample of 94 injured workers with a mean test-retest interval of 21.3 months (SD = 14.1). Congruence rates for undefined code types were 34% for…

Despite interpersonal problems being commonplace in the clinical presentations of people with mental retardation, previous efforts to index interpersonal difficulties have tended to unsatisfactorily rely on external ratings. The Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-32 is a psychometrically robust self-report measure of interpersonal problems in…

This dissertation reports development and validation studies of a Web-based standardized test of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL), designed to measure learners' off-line grammatical and pragmatic knowledge in multiple-choice format. Targeting Japanese majors in the U.S. universities and colleges, the test is designed to explore possible…