Critically examining common statistical approaches and their strengths and weaknesses is an important step in advancing recreation and leisure sciences. To continue this critical examination and to inform methodological decision making, this study compared three approaches to determine how alternative approaches may result in contradictory…

In Gargani and Strong (2014), we describe The Rapid Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness (RATE), a new teacher evaluation instrument. Our account of the validation research associated with RATE inspired a review by Good and Lavigne (2015). Here, we reply to the main points of their review. We elaborate on the validity, reliability, theoretical…

This election factsheet highlights the following points: (1) While the GCSE pass rate has increased since its introduction, this doesn't tell us very much about how standards have changed. Evidence from international surveys suggests that education standards have remained stable. Stopping the use of modules and limiting resits is likely to reduce…

This article describes key findings from contemporary research on screening for early primary grade students in the area of mathematics. Existing studies were used to illustrate the constructs most worth measuring and the diverse strategies that researchers used to study potential measures. The authors discussed the strengths and weaknesses of…

[Slides] presented at the annual conference of the Southern Association for College Admission Counseling, April 2010. This presentation summarizes recent research from the national SAT Validity Study and includes information on the Admitted Class Evaluation Service (ACES) system and how ACES can help institutions conduct their own validity…

With an annual yearly growth rate of 9.3 percent over the last two decades, Advanced Placement courses have become a juggernaut in American high school education. AP courses are routinely perceived as an indicator of educational rigor, and many schools push to enroll low-income or minority students in these courses in the hope of preparing them…

Background and purposes of the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) and the hazards of combining data on these tests in research studies are discussed; the predictive validity of the NTE with in-service teachers is analyzed. Suggestions are made for closer correlation between rating scales and what the standardized tests themselves attempt to…

In order to test claims made regarding the Degrees of Reading Power Test (DRP), a study posed two research questions: (1) How well does the DRP correlate with the more venerable Stanford Achievement Test (SAT)? and (2) How well do these instruments predict students' academic classroom achievement? Three hundred sixty-nine students from two middle…

Described is the development and revision over a 3-year period of the Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning (DIAL), a screening test to identify pre-kindergarten children with learning disabilities. The DIAL is said to provide for gross motor, fine motor, cognitive, and communications assessment of large groups of children. Among…

A study by Rothkopf is frequently cited as showing that educational experts are poor judges of the actual effectiveness of instructional materials. The study is replicated and comments from Ss are used to show that half-trained student experts tend to judge simple materials as more effective than complex materials. (Author)

The purpose of this study was to construct a scale to discriminate between those students who are likely to drop out of school and those who are not. The results indicate that this must be only the first of many steps. (Author)

Trained raters analyzed the educational and psychometric quality of standardized mathematics tests for high school students in the United States. Results showed many tests to be weak in common types of validity and reliability. General mathematics tests had, as a rule, higher ratings than applied mathematics, algebra, or geometry tests. (Author/MN)

The use of ability testing for job selection has become widespread in the Federal Government and in the U.S. Employment Service, which assists private sector employers. The justification for the practice is based largely on research findings claiming a high level of validity for such tests in predicting job performance. More recently, such claims…

As part of a preliminary validation and to determine whether the Ohio Vocational Interest Survey (OVIS) could discriminate among the interests of high school students in six vocational areas (agriculture, distributive education, home economics, health, office, and trade and industrial), the OVIS was administered to 2,387 seniors in 24 schools…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if there were significant relationships between the 12 subtest scores of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) and the seven scores of the verbal and figural tests of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The subjects were a stratified random sample of 40 second grade…