The competency testing movement will yield few improvements in the schools and will create arbitrary barriers to progress for some students. Although it may stimulate educational improvement for limited-English-proficient (LEP) students, as for other students, by giving cohesion to the curriculum, guiding scarce resources for remediation,…

Form level is a major element in the scoring and interpretation of Rorschach responses. Exner's 1974 text and 1976 comprehensive system workbook provided helpful norms and scoring conventions for determining form quality, but its 1985 revision appeared to lead to generally lower levels of form quality. To examine this clinical impression, the…

A technique for detecting item bias that is responsive to attitudinal measurement considerations is a maximum likelihood factor analysis procedure comparing multivariate factor structures across various subpopulations, often referred to as SIFASP. The SIFASP technique allows for factorial model comparisons in the testing of various hypotheses…

This study examines item bias on Forms L and M of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) for 132 Anglo-American and Mexican-American children in grades one through four. Analyses of variance were employed to assess item bias as defined by items x ethnicity interactions. Follow-up analyses were performed using a Bonferroni-type…

Questions about the appropriateness of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test have led to consideration of the use of a criterion referenced test for assessing students' reading abilities before and after each semester of developmental reading instruction. In constructing such a test, a number of steps should be followed. The first step is to clarify the…

Thirty-three counselors attending a workshop at the 1988 Annual Convention of the American Association for Counseling and Development were asked to rate six "critical incident" exercises on bias in test content and unfairness in test usage. About two-thirds of the subjects were female, and one-third were male. The subjects ranged in age…

The frequency and diversity of reading and mathematics tests, test approach (norm-referenced or criterion-referenced) and the format of measurement were studied. The contextual variables surrounding test administration and interpretation were examined. The teacher's knowledge of, and attitudes toward, testing were investigated. Results of a…

The relative contributions of test anxiety and exam-taking skills to information-processing deficits were investigated in a dual-task paradigm comparing high and low test-anxious students with either good or poor exam-taking skills. Sixty-four undergraduate students (21 males, 43 females) were selected based upon pre-test scores on the Test…

On well-constructed multiple-choice tests, the most serious threat to measurement is not variation in item discrimination, but the guessing behavior that may be adopted by some students. Ways of ameliorating the effects of guessing are discussed, especially for problems in latent trait models. A new item response model, including an item parameter…

In a study to determine whether a shift from Formula scoring to Rights scoring can be made without causing a discontinuity in the test scale, the analysis of special administrations of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and Chemistry Achievement Test and the variable section of an operational form of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) is…

The advantages and disadvantages of grade equivalent (GE) scores are explored, including appropriate uses for GE type scores and how to bring current GE scales closer to the type of information educators appear to desire. Although GE scores are not an equal interval scale, not comparable across school subjects, and do not indicate the grade level…

Materials are presented from a workshop designed to provide an opportunity for bilingual education researchers and practitioners to share knowledge, experiences, and concerns related to assessing language proficiency. The sessions included: (1) "Formal and Informal Evaluation of Oral English Language Skills," by William Russell; (2) "Assessing…

An experiment investigated the effects of the instruction rubric at the beginning of an examination paper and of the format of the examination questions themselves. A history test whose questions originally differed widely in format was modified so that its rubric was as clear and concise as possible and all the short answer questions were of the…

Language tests were administered by videotape to 27 deaf children taught to sign English. The tests, one in manual English (ME) and the other in American Sign Language (ASL) each included twelve grammatical distinctions: two aspects of adjectival modification (opposition and ordering), two types of pluralization (is/are and indicative in ME, dual…

Various test validation alternatives available to the small company are presented, along with a series of questions, the purpose of which is to help the small company focus on the type of test validation for which it is best suited. A case study is described to serve as a model. (Author)