Conference papers include: "The 'New Approach of the California State Colleges'" (Glenn S. Dumke); "Toward Institutional Goal-Consciousness" (Richard E. Peterson); "The Commission on Non-traditional Study - Who Needs It?" (John A. Valentine); "The Impact of Mandated Evaluation on Education" (Alexander I. Law); "A Workable Solution to the Demand…

This paper briefly outlines some problems one must solve when developing a video-based test to evaluate what a teacher knows about learning and instruction. Consideration is given to the effect the use of videotapes of actual classroom behavior have on test planning. Two methods of incorporating such situational material into the test…

PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED WITH RULE GENERALITY (DEGREE OF NONSPECIFICITY) AND PERFORMANCE CONSISTENCY IN MATHEMATICAL PRESENTATIONS WERE STUDIED. SPECIFICALLY, THE PURPOSES WERE (1) TO DETERMINE IF TEST BEHAVIOR CONFORMS TO THE SCOPE OF A VERBALLY ADMINISTERED TEST RULE, (2) TO EXPLORE THE INTERPRETABILITY OF VERBAL TEST RULES, AND (3) TO…

Arguments for and against the use of an oral examination as part of the evaluation process are reviewed and found to rely on the experience of practitioners rather than on empirical research. Several alternatives to the traditional oral examination are discussed as ways to increase the validity of educational evaluations. (AA)

A physiological measure, which does not possess the limitations of traditional self-report measures of test anxiety, was used to measure arousal during a simulated achievement testing situation. A sample of 119 fifth and sixth grade students ranked four academic subjects (arithmetic, language arts, social studies, and science) from "most…

The general decline in wide-range achievement and scholastic aptitude test scores over the past few years is examined with particular regards to who is taking the test and the relationship between test objectives and school objectives. (JY)

Different forms of a vocabulary test were administered to college students. Results indicated that as the frequency of specific determiners increased, they formed increasingly strong but differential guessing response sets in high and low scoring groups; however, the magnitude of the effect was much stronger for position specific determiners.…

This article describes a performance test designed by the author that measures the student's ability in the completion of a mechanical task and seriously questions the validity of written interest and aptitude tests. (HMV)

Statements made in a previous article of this journal concerning the Rasch latent trait test model are questioned. Methods of estimation, necessary sample sizes, several formuli, and the general usefulness of the Rasch model are discussed. (JKS)

POI Fakability during counselor selection procedures was investigated through two test administrations with a group of 21 new graduate students in counseling. Subjects were not given self-actualization information. The results imply new counseling students have sufficient information about self-actualization to disseminate Personality Orientation…

The author discusses the difficulties inherent in testing procedures when used for classifying children as handicapped, and procedures which could be used to insure that such tests are applied, evaluated, and interpreted in a nondiscriminatory manner. (MB)

Evidence is cited from one situation that suggests that test anxiety has a positive influence on performance in course assessment, which may be viewed as a less stressful test situation. This result is discussed in terms of Spence's "drive theory." (Author/LBH)

A case study of the speech evaluation of a three-year-old illustrates the effectiveness of a technique for structured assessment of preschoolers who demonstrate anxiety or reluctance to interact. The technique capitalizes on preschoolers' preexistent relationship with television, using video equipment to establish clinical rapport and conduct…

Several statistical rational and empirical procedures are presented for dealing with the problems of non-response or low return rates in surveys, namely mail surveys. Advantages and shortcomings of these procedures in educational research are discussed. (SLD)

A Friends for Education (FFE) survey revealed that no state is below the norm at the elementary school level on six nationally normed commercially available achievement tests. Tests use a norm group from the past for comparison, but FFE suspects that inaccurate initial norms and teaching the test may cause high scores. (SLD)