Findings indicate that students are capable of matching the relative changes in the level of experiences test anxiety with changes in the amplitude of auditory stimulus. (Author/KM)

Evaluations of both individual and group therapies have yielded equivocal results. The results of this study indicate that the proportion of variance contributed by pretesting is influenced by group membership, treatment, and outcome criterion and is largely unpredictable. (Author)

The development of procedures by which test publishers can screen individual purchasers to minimize the possibility of test misuse is described. The Test User Qualifications Working Group (TUQWoG), an outgrowth of the Joint Committee on Testing Practices, was formed to address the prevention of test misuse through improved methods of screening…

While the charge that standardized tests are biased is not new, critics (including feminists) recently have made accusations of gender bias. One argument for the superior performance of males on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT), the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), and the American…

While standard setting procedures are typically discussed in terms of deriving a reasonable cutting score for a given form of a test, the situation may be structured such that the standard has been mandated without regard to the test form itself. This situation may result either through legislative or policy actions and may be a fait accompli by…

A common problem in practical educational research is that of perfect scores which result when latent trait models are used. A simple procedure for managing the perfect and zero response problem encountered in converting test scores into measures is presented. It allows the test user to chose among two or three reasonable finite representations of…

A description of the difficulties encountered in constructing a criterion-referenced test to assess end-of-year skills as part of a program evaluation is presented. The problems encountered in preparing the customized test are described in humorous detail. The first problem involved the listening test obtained from a publisher without…

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…

An ex post facto study involving a survey of exceptionally good and exceptionally problematic principals of Ohio secondary schools was undertaken to assess a method of obtaining a high response rate. The sample included 50 subjects (31 principals of good schools and 19 principals of problem schools), representing 7% of the 720 secondary schools in…

The use of "bias elimination procedures" to reduce the racial bias of test items is discussed. These procedures were forwarded by G. R. Anrig (1988) and R. L. Linn and F. Drasgow (1987). Anrig stated that subjects who "know the same amount about a test item" should have a similar chance of answering it correctly…

An accepted criterion for gauging the fairness of examinees' scores, derived from judge-awarded ratings, has been the size of the correlation between the judges and the inter-rater reliability. Various means of achieving inter-rater reliability were reviewed, and a model to measure inter-rater reliability is forwarded. Both theoretical and…

This study applies a procedure which yields estimates of true score change on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) adjusted for regression effects and student self-selection. It is shown that student self-selection in deciding to repeat an admissions test probably involves factors in addition to the measurement error attributable to variations in…

Thirty-six undergraduate psychology students who had high measured test anxiety were randomly assigned to one of three groups: covert reinforcement, placebo control, and no-treatment control. Pretreatment, posttreatment, and follow-up scores were obtained on three criterion measures. The findings supported the use of covert reinforcement for…

A study of children enrolled in a year-round preschool program for the "culturally disadvantaged" in Tampa, Florida revealed that children with defective vision performed more poorly on both the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and Metropolitan Readiness Test. (Author/JM)