This paper is limited in scope to the preliminary questions that must be asked about a single instrument before one can use students' impressions of their teachers as part of any diagnostic or evaluation process. The described analysis is intended as illustrative of the kinds of questions that should be obtained to demonstrate the reliability and…

Noting that instructor and course evaluations represent important, ongoing concerns to students, faculty, and administrators in speech communication, this paper uses the experimental approach to consider the purposes of evaluations, explores major evaluation issues, reviews the literature concerning specific variables possibly related to these…

The Methodology Inventory is a 76-item 4-point measure divided into eight scales designed to determine what behaviors a teacher engages in while teaching. The eight scales are stimuli for writing, prewriting, writing, revising/editing, evaluation, language development, varieties of discourse, and publication of written work. The instrument was…

The research literature on oral achievement testing is reviewed, and advantages and disadvantages of oral tests are described. A number of suggestions are made for improving the objectivity, reliability, and validity of oral tests. The results of a survey of the attitudes and experiences of a selected sample of college students with regard to…

The Student Evaluation of Teaching instrument (SET) was administered in grades 4 through 12, to examine its construct validity and usefulness for grades 4 to 6. The original SET was developed for grades 7 to 12. This sample included 419 students in grades 4 to 6, and 612 students in grades 7 to 12. Teachers were graduates of Western Kentucky…

A study was conducted to assess the validity and reliability of R. Moss's "Classroom Analysis of Teachers' Theoretical Orientation to Reading" in order to provide an observation system specifically intended for assessing a teacher's reading instruction as a function of theoretical orientation. Five reading experts were chosen to…

The purpose of this report was to analyze a test battery constructed to describe and predict volleyball playing capacity in college and high school women. The following criteria were used for selecting a test for initial inclusion into the battery: (1) The test is related to a basic motor ability important to playing volleyball; (2) The test can…

Few studies have explicitly attended to the personal problem-solving process within the counseling literature, perhaps due in part to the dearth of relevant assessment instruments. To examine the dimensions underlying the applied problem-solving process, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted using data collected from four samples of college…

Presented is an investigation of the item and factor characteristics which make up Forms 8, 9, and 10 of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). Data on the ASVAB forms were collected from mulitary enlistment applications at 20 Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Stations. Item and factor analyses were conducted on samples equated…

The Children's Perception of Support Inventory (CPSI) which assesses the extent to which children perceive their families and peer networks as understanding, responsive, and supportive is described. This measure was constructed (1) to differentiate children on family and peer-support scales and to demonstrate the relationship between the…

This paper has shown the advantages of tailored testing over traditional methods, the need for latent trait theory in the application of tailored testing, and some of the results available to show the quality of estimates obtained by tailored testing procedures. Since the tailored testing procedures overcome many of the problems with traditional…

Two studies were conducted to develop and refine instruments for measuring nonverbal immediacy, defined as approach behaviors increasing sensory stimulation and producing interpersonal closeness. In the first study, three instruments were developed concurrently and were tested to establish their reliability and preliminary validity. These…

The Tredyffrin/Easttown Sex Fairness Survey was designed to assess sex fairness in attitudes toward both sexes in work, home, educational, social, and other contexts. Each subscale contains positively and negatively worded Likert-type items of three types: trait to group; role to group; and judgment of individuals based on group. A preliminary…

This is the third of three volumes designed to cover the problems and issues of developing and managing a formal assessment program. They also offer guidelines and illustrations of several of the more special aspects of assessment programs, such as administering tests or documenting their results. This volume contains summaries of technical…

A project to evaluate Furth's Inventory of Piaget's Developmental Tasks is described, particularly as that test might be useful in adapting instruction and curricula to the cognitive level of science students. This multiple-choice paper-pencil inventory has 72 items in five problem areas: conservation, images, relations, classification, and laws.…