Examines religious practices of Hindus in the United States and develops measures of their religious pathways. Four religious pathways were identified: devotion, ethical action, knowledge, and physical restraint/yoga. Results indicate that the measures of the religious pathways possessed adequate psychometric properties and were predictive of…

Describes the development and pretest of a content analytic category scheme for objectively measuring the sexiness of women's business attire in media presentations. Finds the television samples significantly more provocative than real world attire. Finds a significant positive correlation between the degree of sexiness as measured by the content…

Used computer simulations to examine effectiveness of different criteria for measuring infant visual habituation. Found that a criterion based on fitting a second-order polynomial regression function to looking-time data produced more accurate estimation of looking times and higher power for detecting novelty effects than did the traditional…

This project piloted a rapid assessment self-report measurement to be used with child and adolescent sexual abuse victims to ascertain the effectiveness of counseling. Results from 103 girls ages 10-17 years who had been victims of intrafamilial abuse suggest high test reliability, but content and discriminant validity of the test remain…

Boys with (n=16) and without (n=18) intellectual disability (ID) performed the Wingate Anaerobic Test (WAnT) on two separate occasions. Comparable levels of reliability and agreement were found on the WAnT for both groups. However, the performances of boys with ID were more variable, less powerful, and resulted in lower post-exercise blood lactose…

Describes a preliminary study using the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-Adolescent Form (SASSI-A) as an outcome measure with adolescent offenders. The SASSI-A's primary purpose is to evaluate substance abuse irrespective of the adolescent's defensiveness. Results indicate that the SSASI-A can be successfully used as a treatment planning…

The relationship between racial identity development and multicultural counseling competency across a 2-year period of time was examined in this study. Significant increases were found in multicultural counseling competency but not in their levels of racial identity development across time. Possible explanations for and limitations of this…

Conducted a data quality substudy in conjunction with the School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) 2000 to assess the quality of study questionnaires. Validity of state and district level questionnaires was examined via telephone interviews with original respondents. A test-retest reliability of the school and classroom level…

Assesses the reliability and validity of the Web-based version of the Career Key. Participants completed the Web-based version of the Career Key and the Self-Directed Search-Form R and completed a second Career Key administration 2 weeks later. Test-retest reliability ranged between .75 and .84. With the exception of the conventional scale, all…

The Chinese Perceived Causes of Poverty Scale (CPCPS), constructed to assess how Chinese people explain poverty, covers four areas of explanations: personal problems, lack of opportunities, exploitation, and bad fate. Chinese secondary school students were administered the CPCPS. Four subscales were abstracted from their responses and found to be…

The test-retest reliability and predictive validity of developmental quotients (DQs) derived from the Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale was assessed with 83 children with mental retardation, age 30 months or more. Scores were impressively stable on retest. DQs derived from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development were superior to Cattell DQs in…

Standarized, multiple-choice tests have become the major criterion for a wide range of school decisions affecting student placement, curriculum format, and teaching style. Improved assessment will not reform education. The more insightful and powerful the assessment tool, the more damage is caused by its misuse. Includes 70 references. (MLH)

The study investigated the alternate forms reliability of four type-token ratios (TTRs) of oral language samples obtained from 52 elementary school children. Findings indicated that TTRs were not comparable when calculated for different sample sizes and that they were not reliable measures of the language performance of this population. (Author/DB)

Results from 821 Israeli subjects revealed that the Hebrew version of Kolb's Learning Style Inventory was as reliable as the original English version. Demonstrates initial cross-cultural reliability and validity of the instrument, allowing for its utilization in further research of individual learning styles. (Author/BJV)

Testing of the validity and reliability of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale for autistic adolescents found the measure clearly discriminated between groups of autistic and non-autistic adolescents though it did not discriminate younger from older autistic subjects. (Author/DB)