The cultures of accountability and validity are at odds in high-stakes testing. When the polis demands that tests serve high-stakes accountability functioning, professional testing standards are often compromised. Using flawed indicators can produce unreliable, unrepresentative inferences and decisions. High-stakes testing produces teaching and…

Five criteria are proposed for evaluating performance in research studies: the directness of sampling, the responsiveness of the target, the reliability of the observers, the frequent assessment of the target during the intervention period, and the critical nature of the target. A case study illustrates effectiveness of the criteria. (Author/CR)

Explored applicability of the Loevinger conception of ego development for early adolescence and developed a measure of earliest ego levels: Sentence Completion Test for Children and Youth. Found oral administration of test did not yield essentially different responses or significantly differing ego-level scores from the written version, regardless…

This article provides in-depth information regarding the most commonly used instruments for the screening or diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorders. Reliability, validity, format, and target population are presented to help clinicians select appropriate diagnostic measures. Future directions in the development of new instruments are discussed.…

Describes as example a parents' center in London to examine impact of evaluation exercises on people and services being evaluated. Questions whether evaluators are measuring the right things, whether evidence is valid, and what effects an evaluation may have on services. Identifies features of research and evaluation that are most likely to…

Assessed psychometric properties of the Ages and Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional (ASQ:S-E), a screening instrument for 3- to 63-month-olds. Found that internal consistency was generally high. Test-retest reliability between parents' classifications was .94. Overall sensitivity was .82; overall specificity was .92. Parents reported easy…

Examined psychometric properties of the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales with preschoolers. Found that cross- informant correlations were poor for social skills, low for internalizing behaviors, and modest for externalizing behaviors. Parents and teachers rated boys as having more externalizing behaviors than girls. Parents identified…

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) oral reading fluency and written expression scores for 465 students (grades 6-7) were compared with their year-end English and social studies marks received in grades 8,9, and 10. Correlation and regression analyses provided evidence of the predictive validity of CBM scores as indicators of academic performance.…

In this response to an article exploring the practice of social inquiry in special education by drawing from the democratic ethics of John Dewey (Danforth, 2001), the value of professional knowledge based on science is stressed. It argues that mismatching forms of knowledge with questions causes problems. (Contains references.) (CR)

This research developed and validated a new measure of undergraduate student cynicism--the Cynical Attitudes Toward College Scale (CATCS). Two empirical studies were aimed at validating the CATCS, showing that it can differentiate student groups exhibiting different kinds and levels of cynicism and illustrating how it can predict students' future…

Examined psychometric properties of Caregiver Inventory of Self-Concept (CISC) used with a largely Latino sample of 6- to 66-month-olds, and Tasks for Observation of Self-Concept (TOSC) used with 15- to 48-month-olds. Coefficient alpha and factor analysis provided evidence for test reliability and validity. Self-concept development followed…

Investigated the psychometric integrity of scores from the LibQUAL+ evaluation of perceived library service quality conducted by ARL (Association of Research Libraries). Examines score structure, score reliability, score correlation and concurrent validity coefficients, scale means, and scale standardized norms, and considers the potential of the…

This replication study continued the examination of the psychometric properties of the Foundation Practice Self-Efficacy scale (FPSE) with a sample of MSW students. As in the original study, evidence was found regarding the reliability, validity, and sensitivity to change of this measure. First, internal reliability estimates for the FPSE all…

Background: In professional practice, psychologists and other professionals such as therapists and teachers receive referrals of many children who present with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties that are difficult to understand and assess. The problems of some of these children may stem from pragmatic difficulties in communication.…

In this study, the authors examined the validity of the tripartite model of anxiety and depression (L. A. Clark & D. Watson, 1991) in a community epidemiological sample of 467 urban African American youth. Participants completed the Baltimore How I Feel (N. S. Ialongo, S. G. Kellam, & J. Poduska, 1999), a measure of anxiety and depressive…