This is a progress report on research conducted (1) to consider the methodological issues of response set and multidimensionality, which might lead to a refinement of the Test Anxiety Scale for Children (TASC) and the Defensiveness Scale for Children and (2) to investigate social background and school achievement correlates of test anxiety and…

A study was conducted to identify types of mental operations of 4- and 5-year-olds and to relate them to the child's age and the educational level of the mother. The sample consisted of 423 white English-speaking children of American parentage, evenly divided by sex and as evenly distributed as possible over the 12-month-age range of 4 to 5 years.…

A comprehensive evaluation of the present state of infant and preschool mental testing in the United States is the concern of this monograph by the Society for Research in Child Development. Literature, technical and professional, covering the concept of intelligence and its measurement, was reviewed, organized, and summarized (chapters II and…

The selection of an appropriate test battery is based on its content and applicability to the vocational trainee population. This report describes the testing of a national sample of U.S. high school students with an established version of Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), and a new, enlarged version of the same test battery.…

Transformed item difficulties, chi-square, item characteristic curve (icc) theory and factor score techniques were evaluated as approaches for the identification of biased test items. The study was implemented to determine whether the approaches would provide identical classifications of items as to degree of aberrance for culturally different…

The report is one of four that describes the 1977 phase of an ongoing series of studies by the association. The purpose of the studies is to examine the interrelationships among variables and institutions based on the descriptive measures contained in the Institutional Profile System, which contains a vast array of data on medical schools…

It may be possible, using assessments of motor and perceptual skills which are largely independent of ethnic and educational background, to admit to the military individuals who would be rejected on the basis of their paper-and-pencil test scores, but who through their performance on non-verbal measures, can be identified as highly likely to…

The report provides a detailed analysis by cross-tabulation of how a series of clergy support variables relate to continuing education program participation and to congressional provision of time/money resources for continuing education. A descriptive overview and an analytical perspective are given; tables are provided which contain the…

The racial attitudes of junior and senior high school students in Milwaukee were examined for students in integrated and segregated schools. Black, white, and Latin students in selected public schools were interviewed in the spring of 1974 and reinterviewed in the spring of 1975. Approach/avoidance and integration/separatism dimensions emerged…

A re-analysis of the Situational Attitudes Scale (SAS) was conducted to investigate its generality, validity and reliability and to suggest a more conservative method of analyzing the data. Three forms of the SAS were developed under the name Situational Attitude Inventory. Forms A and B corresponded to the originals; they tested attitudes toward…

The components of school satisfaction among eighth graders as measured by the Student Opinion Poll (SOP) and the relationships of these components with various achievement and ability scores were determined through factor analysis. Four components of school satisfaction were interpretable in meaningful terms: teacher student relationships, student…

Focusing on 221 Agency for International Development (AID) trainees from 32 developing nations, this study evaluated the impact of past experience, personal attitudes and preferences about change, perceptions of another person's attitudes and related behaviors, and a Michigan State University/AID seminar on communications, on self evaluations of…

This study attempted to test, and in some instances develop, measures of values in a manpower training experience. An inquiry was made into the construct validity of measures of risk taking, time perspective, interpersonal trust, and fatalism. Factor analysis was used as a device for partly assessing the construct validity of a questionnaire by…

An experimental study examined the possibility that proximity error could bias results from semantic differential questionnaires. Proximity error occurs when, due to the ordering, or polarity, of the differential scales, one answer on the semantic differential results in another answer to a subsequent question being substantially changed from what…

This report focuses on three main questions: (1) To what extent does a Head Start experience accelerate the rate at which disadvantaged preschoolers acquire cognitive skills? (2) Are the Planned Variation models, simply by virtue of sponsorship more effective than ordinary nonsponsored Head Start programs? and (3) Are some Planned Variation models…