Reviews Richard Herrnstein's article and book concerning I.Q. and argues that the questions of the nature of intelligence and the respective influences of environment and heredity are important not just in the interpretation of statistical evidence but because these questions have implications in the lives of human beings. (Author/JM)

The practical usefulness of the research under review is questioned.

The concept of aptitude is reviewed, and the uses and misuses of aptitude tests are considered. Many aptitude tests measure general ability plus certain more specialized abilities that are important for success in particular educational programs. Aptitude tests can be subdivided into: (1) group-administered aptitude tests, such as the Scholastic…

Divergent thinking tests are probably the most commonly used measure of children's creative thinking. A study was conducted to examine the influence of environmental cues on the divergent thinking of children between the ages of 11 and 13. All subjects received the Uses, Instances, and Line-Meanings divergent thinking tests. Each test involved…

This study examines the effects of foreign students' knowledge of a particular academic area on their comprehension of written texts in English. The students' university majors or areas of study included administration and finance, engineering, math and/or physics, and liberal arts. In two studies, the students performed tasks related to texts in…

Defining calibration of comprehension as the correlation between subjective assessments of knowledge gained from reading and performance on an objective test, this paper draws from literature, as well as the findings of original experiments, to examine issues related to the subject . The paper first documents the claim that poor calibration is the…

One of several papers commissioned by the National Institute of Education (NIE), this discussion addresses the utility of test-equating studies for large-scale program evaluation and investigates the use of standardized tests in similar evaluation efforts. The discussion begins with an examination of the question, Should standardized achievement…

Discrepancies among the standards produced by different criterion-referenced standard-setting techniques may be the result of a failure to adequately define the minimally competent candidate. Current research in this area is reviewed in terms of three categories: studies in which no formal assistance in conceptualization is given to judges,…

The Nelson Denny Reading Test (NDRT) is probably the most widely used test of reading comprehension at the college level in the nation. However, reviews of the test, as well as recent reports of its failure to adequately measure gain or lack of gain of college students enrolled in reading improvement courses, do not support the popularity it has…

A classical problem in mastery testing is the choice of passing score and test length so that the mastery decisions are optimal. This problem has been addressed several times from a variety of viewpoints. In this paper, the usual indifference zone approach is adopted, with a new criterion for optimizing the passing score. Specifically,…

A "maximin" model for item response theory based test design is proposed. In this model only the relative shape of the target test information function is specified. It serves as a constraint subject to which a linear programming algorithm maximizes the information in the test. In the practice of test construction there may be several…

An attempt was made to determine whether student honesty is affected by a take-home test, referred to as an unstructured evaluation. A group of 27 students in a history class at a university was given a teacher-made take-home test as a mid-term examination. A second group of 27 students was given the same examination in class. Unknown to the…

Based on a review of the literature, this paper examines criticisms leveled against the communication audit developed by the International Communication Association (ICA) and then offers a modified version of the audit designed to meet those criticisms. Following a brief introduction, the first section of the paper reviews criticisms of the audit,…

To simplify data from a large survey, it is desirable to classify subjects according to their attitudes toward certain issues, as measured by questions in the survey. Responses to 12 questions were identified as indicative of attitudes toward deschooling education. These attitudes were explained by means of patterns exhibited within the responses…