Describes development of Adolescent Drug Abuse Diagnosis (ADAD), a 150-item instrument with a structured interview format, which produces a comprehensive evaluation of the life problem areas pertinent to the needs of adolescent drug abuse clients. A series of validity and reliability tests are described, along with characteristics of the…

Describes process used in constructing Student Developmental Task and Lifestyle Inventory (SDTLI), instrument designed to measure certain aspects of Chickering's theory of psychosocial development of traditional-age college students. Summarizes reliability and validity studies. Discusses use of SDTLI. (NB)

A study of the usefulness of a comprehensive placement examination for individualizing the experiential course sequence for pharmacy students and providing needed remediation in selected subject areas found that the test could not be supported for preclinical screening but might be useful for identifying students needing remediation. (MSE)

A study examined the responses of 89 physical child abusers and 108 comparison subjects to the Child Abuse Potential Inventory to determine whether the inventory's response inconsistency scale could be used for screening for physical child abuse. The scale was rejected as a reliable or valid measure. (Author/MSE)

General/special education secondary teachers (N=183) and nonhandicapped and handicapped students (N=437) were surveyed on perceptions of the importance of social skills in relating to others, relating to adults, and relating to oneself. Discussed are the survey instrument's reliability, importance ratings for skills, and levels of agreement…

Responding to Field's criticism of the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS), Guglielmino cites evidence supporting the scale's validity and reliability, Long notes gaps in Field's literature review, and McCune critiques Field's approach to factor analysis in testing the scale. (SK)

Investigated measurement characteristics of both forms of Finding Embedded Figures Test (FEFT). College students (N=302) completed both forms of FEFT or one form of FEFT and Group Embedded Figures Test. Results suggest that FEFT forms provide reasonable reliable and valid data. (Author/NB)

Used 112 adult patients from three psychiatric facilities to examine psychometric properties of Basic Personality Inventory scales. Found no differences across facilities; sex differences on some scales. Scales appeared to be internally consistent. Using clinical staff ratings as criteria, scales were found to possess both convergent and…

Test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and validity of the Vocational Assessment and Curriculum Guide with mentally retarded and nonretarded subjects having different employment characteristics was investigated. Empirical validation results suggested that domain scores differentiated between retarded subjects with only sheltered work…

Structured clinical interviews concerning childhood histories of physical and sexual abuse with 70 mentally ill women at 2 times found test-retest reliability of .63 for physical abuse and .82 for sexual abuse. Validity, assessed as consistency with an independent clinical assessment, showed 75% agreement for physical abuse and 93% agreement for…

Psychometric analyses of data from 230 individuals yielded a 29-item 4-scale revision of the original 50-item 5-scale Mental Retardation Attitude Inventory. Results showed adequate item characteristics; adequate reliability and homogeneity; adequate reliability, homogeneity, specificity, and independence of the four scales; and initial validity…

The Taxonomy of Problematic Social Situations for Children (TOPS) was completed for 30 fifth-grade children on 2 occasions 8 weeks apart. The TOPS total and factor scores were found to be highly temporally stable and convergent with peer evaluations administered concurrently, with the exception of peer "like most" nominations.…

Ratings on the Autism Behavior Checklist for 18 children (ages 9-16) with normal intelligence and infantile autism or infantile autism, residual state, revealed that all subjects met the cutoff score for autism or borderline autism on retrospective ratings, but 14 received current ratings below the cutoff. The Autism Diagnostic Interview ruled out…

The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) represent a breakthrough in measuring early language production. Nevertheless, the CDIs' word comprehension component may not be a valid measure, because parents report too high a word comprehension ability for their children. Suggests that administering the CDIs to parents in an interview…

Describes several ways to view senior exhibits at an urban high school employing the Coalition of Essential Schools'"graduation by exhibition" assessment method. The coalition advocates a pedagogy combining a personalized, caring environment with a focus on student production. Judges must balance warm regard with cool, critical appraisal…