This book introduces "facilitated communication," a method of assisting people with autism to communicate by means of physical assistance in typewriting. The book is organized as a kind of a story around the author's own experience using the facilitated communication method, with examples of fieldwork using qualitative research to…

The intent of the present study was to test for the validity and equivalency of a second-order factorial structure of the Beck Depression Inventory for and across three independent samples (n1=661; n2=239; n3=196) of nonclinical Swedish adolescents; the model under study derived from a cross-validated study of Canadian high school adolescents…

This book provides the schedules, scales, and procedures for systematic assessment of child care environments. It also suggests the way to develop a scale oriented to the physical environment. The introduction notes that of various scales available for describing and evaluating different aspects of child care programs and centers, many scales are…

It is generally assumed that test administrators are accurate and dependable, and that the psychometric properties of validity and reliability applied to test givers are at acceptably high levels. The test giver is thought to have been standardized through training reinforced by experience. This paper considers validity and reliability in relation…

In the early 1970s A. Constantinople wrote a seminal article that led to the development of the construct of psychological androgyny. The Bem Sex-Role Inventory is a popular measure of the construct, but the measure remains controversial. The construct validity of scores from the measure was explored using confirmatory factor analysis on data from…

The Strong Interest Inventory (SII) is the most widely used instrument of its type in existence. The inventory is individually administered and can be used with high school students, college students, and adults. It is typically used in vocational counseling. The new 1994 version resembles the original published in 1927 both in the construction of…

This brief report summarizes the legal requirements of nondiscrimination imposed by the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and the Americans with Disabilities Act as of July 26, 1992, especially in the area of testing. The report emphasizes that literacy tests must be nondiscriminatory and related to the job for which they are given. The following…

As the new version of the "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" is being developed, it is apparent that putting together a set of standards for test publishing involves many difficulties. Although the basic intent of almost all parties involved is similar, there are many potential areas of disagreement among parties to…

Goal orientations in high school students may be grouped into learning (e.g., mastery) and performance (e.g., grades, competition) goals. Past research on students' goals is reviewed. Students' motivation for achievement is complex. Given the importance of fostering and strengthening learning goal orientations in high school as well as in college,…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

This paper synthesizes ideas from the fields of graphical modeling and education testing, particularly item response theory (IRT) applied to computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Graphical modeling can offer IRT a language for describing multifaceted skills and knowledge, and disentangling evidence from complex performances. IRT-CAT can offer…

This report documents the construct validity and reliability of the Professional Development Inventory (PDI), an assessment center sponsored by the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP). The assessment center provides a means for assessing participants in situations simulating those confronted by principals on the job. The…

The question of reliability in the intellectual assessment of young children is cause for concern among developmental psychologists and diagnosticians. The issue of reliability is confounded by normal variability in skills during early childhood, by the problem of consistency across time of age-appropriate assessment measures, and by the selection…

To address the need for writing assessment tools, two analytic measures for evaluating managerial writing were used: the Analysis of Argument Measure based on Toulmin's (1958) elements of an argument, and the Persuasive Adaptiveness Measure, which draws on the Delia, Kline, and Burleson (1979) ranking system for scoring the degree of social…

This paper reports on evaluations of a projective measure of self-esteem adapted from the Tasks of Emotional Development (TED). The evaluations were conducted in 7 studies with a total sample of 416 children and adults. The revised TED uses a five-point scoring system ranging from negative to positive self-esteem. Interrater reliability in the…