If the foreign language teaching profession is to succeed in developing and using better and more pertinent means of evaluating student achievement (and, consequently, of measuring its own instructional effectiveness), teachers at every level must reexamine testing and evaluation procedures and those engaged in research and development must…

This report is the final one in a trilogy stemming from the 1968 Summer Reading Institute in the Washington Model School Division. The Institute was designed to meet the needs of elementary school teachers in their attempts to teach language skills and reading to students in grades K-3. This follow-up study examines the results of the Summer…

With so many unanswered questions and controversies regarding intelligence, testing in general, and testing diverse students in particular, what can educators in gifted education do to ensure that these students have access to and are represented in gifted education programs and services? In this monograph, the author examines test bias by first…

Effects of blind guessing on the success of passing true-false and multiple-choice tests are investigated under a stochastic binomial model. Critical values of guessing are thresholds which signify when the effect of guessing is negligible. By checking a table of critical values assembled in this paper, one can make a decision with 95% confidence…

The relationship between measurements of personality and leadership is described in this paper. Following an introduction and a statement of the problem, the first part discusses the principles of measurement, beginning with the basic issues and assumptions and going on to examine various aspects of validity, reliability, instrument construction,…

The validity of results from international assessments depends on the correctness of the test translations. If the tests presented in one language are more or less difficult because of the manner in which they are translated, the validity of any interpretation of the results can be questioned. Many test translation methods exist in the literature,…

Designing a test using three-parameter item response theory (IRT) is discussed. A brief review of IRT is followed by a discussion of two types of test design: (1) selecting items using confidence envelopes (confidence envelope method); and (2) using item characteristic curves and their confidence intervals (test envelope method). The confidence…

Item response theory (IRT) model parameter estimates have considerable merit and open up new directions for test development, but misleading results are often obtained because of errors in the item parameter estimates. The problem of the effects of item parameter estimation errors on the test development process is discussed, and the seriousness…

The realistic competency and activity scales of the Self-Directed Search were revised to learn if women's scores on these scales could be increased without reducing their concurrent and construct validity for men and women. Results indicate the revisions increase women's realistic scores, but fail to affect their high point codes. (Author)

Discusses a study designed to examine the effect of translating the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT) for Spanish speaking school entrants, to determine whether administering the MRT in Spanish makes a significant difference on the scores of Spanish-speaking students, and whether these differences obtain for students in bilingual and all-English…

The Vocational Preference Inventory responses from 290 subjects were subjected to a Rasch item analysis, one of a class of latent trait models. After elimination of 22 items which did not fit the model, a sex-free form of the VPI was obtained. (Author)

The use of placement tests can discriminate against people with linguistic styles differing from the population used to norm the test, resulting in significantly lessening both achievement and expectations for many people. (EH)

This document for participants comprises the proceedings of a fifth national conference on the retention of black college students. The conference consisted of 2 preconference workshops, 7 general sessions, and 21 concurrent sessions. A total of 68 selected papers were presented. Preconference workshops focused on the freshman year experience and…

This paper rates the technical aspects of 41 tests that match characteristics associated with giftedness, using criteria developed in "A Consumer's Guide to Tests in Print" (Hammill, Brown, Bryant, 1989). A summary of validity studies showing these tests' use in identifying gifted youngsters for special programs is also provided. In this sample of…