Developed Mathematics Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC) and administered to 562 gifted, normal, and mildly mentally handicapped students in grades 4 through 8. Found MASC to be internally consistent measure of mathematics anxiety for grades four through eight. Found construct validity evidence based on MASC's relationship with mathematics grades,…

Administered Counseling Form of Career Maturity Inventory Attitude Scale and measure of appropriateness of career choices to 83 Black and 239 White high school students. White students scored significantly higher than Blacks in Involvement, Independence, and Compromise in Career Decision Making and on Appropriateness of Career Choices. (Author/NB)

Addresses the impact of the ideology of IQ testing on African Americans and Asians. Presents an overview and an analysis of scholarly treatises that illustrate that IQ testing continues to be one mechanism for maintaining racial prejudice and inequality in the United States. (JS)

Examined 3 aspects of construct validity of Expectations about Counseling-Brief form (EAC-B): whether it measures expectations about counseling rather than other constructs, whether test items are clearly understood, whether test maintains respondents' attention. Analyzed cognitions of 30 undergraduates to determine which thought processes were…

Two studies probe validation, replication, and normative questions regarding the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD) procedure. The first included teachers from 15 elementary schools, while the second drew from 2 school districts. Similar results from both studies supported SSBD validity. The second study also supported reliability…

A national survey assessing the degree and kind of family intervention services received was completed by 503 mothers with handicapped children in early intervention programs. Factor analysis was performed and items used to construct the Family-Focused Intervention Scale with 5 reliable subscales. Comparisons among groups of mothers supported…

Whether external validity of intelligence quotient (IQ) scores from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised is moderated by reading ability was studied with 382 Canadian elementary school students. Little evidence was found that IQ scores had less concurrent validity for poor readers. Implications for remedial services provision are…

Describes a study involving 29 low-income parents with learning difficulties that validated a prescriptive home-danger and safety-precaution instrument containing 14 epidemiological categories to be used in the design and evaluation of family-tailored injury prevention and safety interventions. (Author/CR)

The validity of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory was tested with a sample of 134 Chilean adults. The scale was able to discriminate between abusing and nonabusing individuals. The items which had the greatest discriminating power were related to feelings of depression, loneliness, anxiety, and family problems. (CR)

Describes United States literacy characteristics, based on April 2000 reports from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Discusses Angoff methods for evaluating validity of high-stakes testing programs in Massachusetts and Virginia. (MLH)

Data from 77 ninth-grade Spanish students who took an objective test, a performance assessment, and a measure of perceptions of control indicate that control perceptions predict scores on performance assessments, not objective tests. Performance assessments thus reflect motivational variables beyond the constructs being tested. (SK)

The accuracy of the Brigance K&1 Screen in the early identification of Head Start children with possible cognitive/academic giftedness was explored with 134 children, 13 of whom were identified as potentially gifted on the K-ABC. These potentially gifted children also performed significantly better on the Brigance than did other children.…

A study involving 105 sixth-graders examined three aspects of technical adequacy with respect to two general outcome measures in mathematics: the effects of aggregating scores and correcting for random guessing on reliability and validity and the extent to which the measures were sensitive to changes in performance. (Contains references.)…

This article provides an overview of strength-based assessment of children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders and discusses the development and psychometric characteristics of the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS). The BERS is a norm-referenced, standardized test that assesses the strengths of children and…

Comparison of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Third Edition) and the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) with 78 special education students found that the WISC-III identified more children, especially more black children, as having mental retardation. Results imply that the problem of disproportionate identification of black children…