A study examined several possible indicators of the quality of student writing to see what relationship, if any, existed among those indicators and the holistic scores given by raters to compositions written for the University System of Georgia's Regents Testing Program. The indicators examined were (1) total number of sentences, (2) average…

Concerned with providing managerial assessment centers with oral communication criteria against which communication apprehension may be measured, the convergent validity of the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension--Organization Form (PRCA-OF) was tested against 23 raters' scores in five one-day developmental assessment centers. The…

A study of learner modality in second language learning conducted at a small, private liberal arts university had as subjects 20 freshmen in a second-semester Spanish course. The students' modality strength (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or mixed) was correlated with Scholastic Aptitude Test measures, grades, and gender. The findings support…

The Student Evaluation of Teaching instrument (SET) was administered in grades 4 through 12, to examine its construct validity and usefulness for grades 4 to 6. The original SET was developed for grades 7 to 12. This sample included 419 students in grades 4 to 6, and 612 students in grades 7 to 12. Teachers were graduates of Western Kentucky…

A study was conducted to assess the validity and reliability of R. Moss's "Classroom Analysis of Teachers' Theoretical Orientation to Reading" in order to provide an observation system specifically intended for assessing a teacher's reading instruction as a function of theoretical orientation. Five reading experts were chosen to…

The well-known study on fear of success (FOS) by Horner (1968) asserted that women low in FOS do better on achievement-oriented tasks under competitive conditions, while women high in the motive do better when the situation is non-competitive. This paper critically reviews the methodology of this study and concludes that the statistical test…

The purpose of this report was to analyze a test battery constructed to describe and predict volleyball playing capacity in college and high school women. The following criteria were used for selecting a test for initial inclusion into the battery: (1) The test is related to a basic motor ability important to playing volleyball; (2) The test can…

This study examines the relationships between the measures of visual and auditory discrimination contained in five reading readiness batteries: the Clymer-Barrett Prereading Battery (Form A), the Gates-MacGinitie Readiness Skills Test, the Harrison-Stroud Reading Readiness Profile, the Metropolitan Reading Readiness Tests (Form A), and the…

Several issues are related to the use of educational tests. First, test users must be able to choose appropriate tests, interpret scores, and make decisions based on scores. In the field of educational testing, few test users have adequate training in these areas. Second, test makers must clearly specify directions for administration, allowable…

The author stresses the need for caution in using intelligence test results to identify mildly retarded children under seven years of age. (LH)

Few studies have explicitly attended to the personal problem-solving process within the counseling literature, perhaps due in part to the dearth of relevant assessment instruments. To examine the dimensions underlying the applied problem-solving process, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted using data collected from four samples of college…

In order to determine whether egocentrism can be conceptualized as a unitary construct, 100 children (51 four-year-olds, 37 five-year-olds, and 12 six-year-olds) were administered a visual/spatial perspective task, a cognitive/communicative task, and an affective task. All tasks were designed to measure different facets of egocentrism. The 50…

While affective scales designed to measure students' attitudes toward reading have become an important part of teachers' assessments of student performance, little research has been conducted to determine whether these scales provide accurate information, nor have researchers adequately compared reading attitudes according to student achievement…

Two studies are presented in this report. The first is titled "Empirical Studies of Multilevel Approaches to Test Development and Interpretation: Measuring Between-Group Differences in Instruction." Because of a belief that schooling does affect student achievement, researchers have questioned the empirical and measurement techniques…

The purpose of this study was to examine the stability of measures of student writing performance across types of discourse (genres) and across response modes (selected response: multiple choice; constructed response: single paragraph, and full length essay). The study addressed the following: (1) the relationship/stability of writing scores…