Standardization data based on responses of 616 Puerto Ricans to the Spanish version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (D. Wechlser, 1981) reveal reliability data and base rates to assist in evaluating the clinical significance of differences between Performance Intelligence Quotient (PIQ) and Verbal Intelligence Quotient (VIQ).…

Generalizability of performance-based assessment scores across raters and tasks is examined, focusing on implications of generalizability analyses for specific uses and interpretations of assessment results. Although it seems probable that assessment conditions, task characteristics, and interactions with instructional experiences affect the…

The eight articles of this issue examine the nature of differences that arise between qualitative and quantitative researchers in program evaluation in terms of goals and epistemologies. The origins of these differences and their consequences are explored. Authors represent both perspectives but do not defend their ideological turfs. (SLD)

This article presents considerations for assessing sensory issues in individuals with autism spectrum disorders as a means of gathering information useful to families and professionals in understanding children and designing intervention strategies that support success across environments. Formal assessment, informal assessment, dynamic…

Although it is assumed that student cognition contributes to student performance on achievement tests, it may be that current testing models lack the degree of specification necessary to warrant such inferences. With test score interpretations as the referent, the authors in this special issue address the role of student cognition in learning and…

Career certainty refers to the degree to which individuals feel confident, or decided, about their occupational plans. Since Parsons first classified people into career-decided and career-undecided groups, counseling researchers and practitioners have worked to formally assess career choice status. These efforts have yielded two generations of…

Computer-assisted testing (CAT) in counseling and therapy is becoming increasingly common due to dramatic improvements in cost-effectiveness and increased counselor familiarity with computer applications. The assumption underlying the use of CAT is that the effectiveness of counseling is improved by allocating repetitive computational and…

The concept of "washback," especially prominent in the field of applied linguistics, refers to the extent to which a test influences teachers and learners to do things they would not otherwise necessarily do. Some writers invoke the notion of washback validity, holding that a test's validity should be gauged by the degree to which it has…

This study examined the effects of two variations of the Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD) on university students. STAD is a system of cooperative learning which features small heterogeneous teams of 4-6 members who tutor each other on the material in the course and prepare each other for weekly quizzes. Students take the quizzes…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test were administered in counterbalanced order to a sample of 39 school identified students (28 males and 11 females) with learning disabilities. Mean age was 9 years, 3 months. The WISC-III Full Scale IQ and K-BIT IQ Composite produced a correlation of .74 (p…

Test data from a large licensure examination were used to investigate the impact of the number of score groups and score group size on the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) alpha statistic. Two kinds of quasi-experimental studies were conducted: (1) baseline MH analyses in which the number of score groups and the ethnicity of each randomly equivalent…

This paper explores a logistic regression procedure for estimating item parameters in the Rasch model and testing the hypothesis of item parameter invariance across several groups/populations. Rather than using item responses directly, the procedure relies on "pseudo-paired comparisons" (PC) statistics defined over all possible pairs of…

Compared two groups of children know to be poor readers, those with adequate perceptual functioning and those without, to determine what inadequate perceptual functioning is related to the severity of the reading and adjustment problems. Inadequate Bender performance was related to a more severe reading problem. (Author/PC)

Although much research has been done examining adult stressors, only recently have researchers focused attention on measuring levels of stress in children. Because children tend not to be aware of their own tense state, instruments are needed to measure levels of stress in children. The two main methods of measuring stress in children are to ask…

Issues emerging from a look at student achievement, which is defined in its usual school context as achievement on standardized tests, are addressed. A mythology about standardized testing has developed, in part because the metaphoric languages of medicine and business have been applied to education, defining it in terms of cure, efficiency, and…