This report examines the opinions of 726 registered voters in 5 small, rural mid-west school districts. The purposes of the study were: (1) to assess citizens' satisfaction with the school districts' programs and services; (2) to indicate strengths and weaknesses in the school districts' programs and services; (3) to identify problems facing the…

There is a natural tension between experimentally designed studies and case studies, which differ in that they are not concerned with the interaction of variables in the quantitative and statistical sense. This paper describes a study that was not experimentally designed, but its major findings were generalizable to the overall population of…

The adequacy of several approaches to estimation of proficiency distributions for the Trial State Assessment (TSA) in eighth grade mathematics of the National Assessment of Educational Progress was examined. These approaches are more restrictive than the estimation procedures originally used, with the same kind of plausible-values approach that…

A longitudinal study examined the contributions of early language ability, home characteristics, and emerging knowledge about literacy to children's later decoding and comprehension ability. The study followed 127 children from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of grade 3 (when 83 were left). Subjects attended schools in a small, rural,…

Six separate studies were conducted using judgments from academic and practitioner experts to determine the knowledge structure of the Certified Financial Planner Professional Education Program (i.e., the organization of discipline topics and the relationships among them). The program consists of six sequential financial planning knowledge…

To change the way classroom discipline and student discipline are examined, a two-study investigation, rather than focusing on student noncompliance and other types of student misbehaviors, examined teachers themselves as potential sources of instructional and/or motivational problems in the college classroom. The first study was designed to…

The present study investigated the reliability and validity of scores from the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory. The CAP is a screening device for physical abuse potential in adults; it is a self-administered test written on a third-grade reading level. Subjects were 113 mothers, including 53 (46.9%) mothers of young children with handicaps,…

The factorial validity of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was studied for 98 elementary school, 163 intermediate school, 162 secondary school, and 218 university teachers in Ottawa (Canada). The equivalence of factorial measurements and structure was tested across the groups. Exploratory factor analyses were used to examine the initial factor…

This study examined child developmental, program, family ecological, and demographic variables from 200 families with mentally retarded or developmentally delayed toddlers, to identify predictors of child developmental progress and parental satisfaction following participation in early intervention. Child developmental progress correlated…

Self/other agreement between self-concept ratings by the individual and self-concepts inferred by significant others is of theoretical and practical importance, but the review by J. S. Shrauger and T. J. Schoeneman (1979) found no evidence for such agreement. In the present investigation, the Self Description Questionnaire III (SDQIII) was…

The study reported in this paper investigated the structure of the health locus of control beliefs of elementary school children using second-order factor analysis and the measurement characteristics of the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC) Scales. Changes of wording were made in 10 of the MHLC Scales items in order to improve the…

A factor analysis study was conducted of the Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning (WRAML), a test developed from a test structure model of memory and learning. The battery is composed of nine subtests (three verbal, three visual, and three learning subsets). The sample consisted of 903 students aged 5 years through 8 years 11 months, and…

This document provides an overview of the 1980 and 1981 Illinois Inventory of Educational Progress (IIEP) in mathematics. Development of the IIEP is discussed, and results and analyses of the tests administered to students in grades 4, 8, and 11 are presented. Test items are included. Factor analysis identified two factors, "knowledge of…

The purpose of the present investigation is to study the hierarchical structure of academic self-concept. The original Shavelson model posited specific facets of academic self-concept to define a single higher-order facet, but Marsh and Shavelson (1985) found the hierarchical structure to be more complicated. In a revised model they proposed that…

When the three-parameter logistic model and item response theory are used to analyze Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) data, there are problems with the assumption of unidimensionality. Linear factor analytic models, exploratory factor analysis programs, and the comparison of item parameter estimates for heterogeneous and homogeneous…