Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate measures reflecting the onset of tense marking for children between the ages of 2;0 (years;months) and 3;0. Method: The validity of 4 cumulative measures of tense marker emergence and productivity was evaluated relative to existing measures of early grammatical development in a sample…

Item response theory (IRT) and categorical data factor analysis (CDFA) are complementary methods for the analysis of the psychometric properties of psychiatric measures that purport to measure latent constructs. These methods have been applied to relatively few child and adolescent measures. We provide the first combined IRT and CDFA analysis of a…

This paper reports on an effort to develop an Internet well-being measure for possible use by government agencies and industry associations that are directly involved with the promulgation of the Internet. Such measures can help officials gauge the social health of those Internet-related industries and institutional sectors, which in turn can…

This article sets out a detailed commentary on the neglected end of the assessment centre, namely, the candidate. It highlights the variety of ways in which assessment centres do not always live up to their claims and can act against rather than in the interests of the candidate. It shares with assessment, counselling and guidance professionals an…

In this article, the authors respond to Jerzy Trzebinski's "Narratives and understanding other people." The first author's viewpoint comes from his work as a doctor, a psychiatrist, and a social psychiatrist preoccupied with rehabilitation and recovery for people with severe mental illness. According to him, Trzebinski's work raised important…

A lognormal model for the response times of a person on a set of test items is investigated. The model has a parameter structure analogous to the two-parameter logistic response models in item response theory, with a parameter for the speed of each person as well as parameters for the time intensity and discriminating power of each item. It is…

What distinguishes students' sense-making of the past from historians' thinking is that historians know how to determine the validity of competing truth claims, a rather complex intellectual skill that requires a sophisticated set of heuristics and strategies. One way to help students learn how to determine the validity of competing truth claims…

We explored the relationships between "autistic" traits as measured by the AQ (Autism-Spectrum Quotient; Baron-Cohen et al., J. Autism Develop. Disord. (2001b) 31 5) and various personality traits or cognitive ability, which usually coincide with autistic symptoms, for general populations. Results showed the AQ was associated with…

In this study, predictive classification accuracy was used to select those tasks from a kindergarten screening battery that best identified children who, three years later, were classified as educable mentally handicapped or as having a specific learning disability. A subset of measures enabled correct classification of 91% of the children in…

Objective: The pediatric version of the Short Form of the Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire (PQ-LES-Q) was developed to aid in the assessment of an important aspect of life experience in children and adolescents. Method: The reliability and validity of the PQ-LES-Q was tested using data from a sample of 376 outpatient…

The purpose of this study was to train a paraprofessional to implement the Direct Instruction (DI) "Spelling Mastery" (Dixon, Engelmann, & Bauer, 1990a, 1990b) program and to investigate the effectiveness of the instruction delivered by the paraprofessional for students with learning disabilities. We investigated (a) the extent to…

This study examined the multiple true-false (MTF) test format in second language testing by comparing multiple-choice (MCQ) and multiple true-false (MTF) test formats in two language areas of general English: vocabulary and reading. Two counter-balanced experimental designs--one for each language area--were examined in terms of the number of MCQ…

Content analysis scales apply rigorous measurement to verbal communications and make possible the quantification of text in counseling research. The limitations of the Origin and Pawn Scales (M. T. Westbrook & L. L. Viney, 1980), the Positive Affect Scale (M. T. Westbrook, 1976), the Content Analysis Scales of Psychosocial Maturity (CASPM; L.…

This paper explores alternative approaches for facilitating efficient, evidence-centered item development for a new type of verbal reasoning item developed for use on the GRE® General Test. Results obtained in two separate studies are reported. The first study documented the development and validation of a fully automated approach for locating the…

The emergence of numerous learning style models over the past 25 years has brought increasing attention to the idea that students learn in diverse ways and that one approach to teaching does not work for every student or even most students. We have reviewed five learning style instruments (the Kolb Learning Style Indicator, the Gregorc Style…