Curriculum-based measurement Reading (CBM-R) is an assessment procedure used to evaluate students' relative performance compared to peers and to evaluate their growth in reading. Within the response to intervention (RtI) model, CBM-R data are plotted in time series fashion as a means modeling individual students' response to varying levels of…

Most discussions of measurement theory are focused on "scales" of measurement, but it is not clear whether reference is made to the mechanisms of measurement or the metric information derived from measurement. This emphasis on scales in measurement theory has not always provided a meaningful or fruitful description of measurement activities in…

Looking beyond the overall effectiveness of sensory stimulation, this study aimed to identify specific aspects of infant behavior most responsive to early stimulation. Subjects were 65 premature infants with a birth weight of less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces and a gestational age under 37 weeks. Experimental group members had completed a multimodal…

Both the attenuation paradox of traditional test theory and the assumption of local independence in person-item response theory have caused problems in interpretation. This paper demonstrates that the two are related concepts, and, through this demonstration, both are clarified. It is demonstrated that the breakdown of local independence leads to…

McCauley and Colberg described a theory of transportability and provided data to demonstrate the feasibility of their approach. It is argued that the transportability notion resembles earlier cross cultural work and does not add new insights into cross cultural comparison. Their statistical checks do not preclude the possibility of bias.…

Considers the relationship between coordinate estimates in components analysis and multidimensional scaling. Reports three small Monte Carlo studies comparing nonmetric scaling solutions to components analysis. Results are related to other methodological issues surrounding research on the general ability factor, response tendencies in…

Presents a unified concept of test validity that integrates both the scientific and ethical considerations of test interpretation and use. Argues that the appropriateness, meaningfulness, and usefulness of score-based inferences are inseparable, and that this integration is based on construct validity. (FMW)

This proposal attempts to follow in Allan Birnbaum's tradition by using Bayesian ideas to show that his mental test model possesses even broader applicability than previously realized. Birnbaum's two significant contributions to the theories of statistics and educational testing are: (1) the proof that the sufficiency and conditionality principles…

The purpose of this paper is to present a generalization of the concept of item difficulty to test items that measure more than one dimension. Three common definitions of item difficulty were considered: the proportion of correct responses for a group of individuals; the probability of a correct response to an item for a specific person; and the…

This study examined four measures of creativity as predictors of mathematics and science performance in a program for talented high school students (N=29). Correlational analyses indicated that the How Do You Think Test (HDYT) and ratings on the Teachers' Evaluation of Students' Creativity (TESC) were predictive of the students' performance in the…

This paper points out that there are certain generalizations about directions for guessing and methods of scoring that require that data be derived from random groups design. It supports the viewpoint that it is neither sufficient nor appropriate to make such generalizations on the basis of an analysis of scores obtained from the answer sheets of…

The purpose of this study was to determine how cognitive style instructions to respondents of a survey instrument affected the resulting psychometric properties of the scale. It was hypothesized that a group which is instructed to carefully respond will have a mean score further from the neutral point, a larger standard deviation, and a higher…

The Mantel-Haenszel (MH) procedure attempts to identify and quantify differential item performance (item bias). This paper summarizes the MH statistics, and identifies the parameters they estimate. An equivalent procedure based on the Rasch model is described. The theoretical properties of the two approaches are compared and shown to require the…

This paper addresses practical Army problems in reading assessment from a theory base reflecting the most recent research on reading comprehension. Military and occupational research shows that reading proficiency is related to job performance. Reading assessment is a key issue in the Army due to changes in the reading ability levels of the Army…

For over 50 years, the overwhelming weight of evidence has been that subjects are able to make use of partial information when responding to multiple-choice items. The subject chooses the alternative which has given rise to the lowest mismatch, except that if this minimum mismatch is larger than some threshold, the question is left unanswered.…