The effects of training and participation on sources of variance in a set of ratings of college classroom teaching effectiveness were compared. College students (N=96) were randomly assigned to four cells of the experimental design. Subjects in cells (A) and (B) participated in the construction of a set of behaviorally-anchored rating scales…

A brief discussion of the concept of validity, a description of the nature and purposes of the Iowa Tests of Educational Development (ITED), and a rationale for the inclusion of ITED results as part of the overall program evaluation of a secondary school are presented. According to the authors, the ITED can validly be used as one of the…

Sex restrictiveness and sex bias in occupational interest scales are reviewed, and some alternative solutions are briefly discussed. Traditionally, it was thought that sex restrictive interest inventories merely reflected the inherent differences between males and females. The author defines sex restrictiveness according to the degree that the…

A questionnaire survey was developed to measure the attitudes of students toward the Air Force Traffic Safety Course. Mandatory for virtually all personnel entering the Air Force, this course was taught in a standardized multimedia format at more than 140 locations . It was a 10-hour course of instruction covering environmental hazards, vehicle…

Testing in the United States has had a checkered history since tests were developed and used at the beginning of this century. In the earlier part of the century, test results were used to justify the exclusion of immigrants from parts of Europe. More recently, they have come under attack as restricting the access of blacks to jobs and education.…

Two research reports are included in this document. The first is a study of children's anxiety. A sixteen-item trait anxiety scale was used on a population of students in grades 4 through 6. The first ten items measured anxiety about making mistakes in performing physical education activities, and the remaining six items measured general anxiety.…

A review of court cases, involving the use of various standardized tests, highlights the kinds of test validity and the interpretation by the courts of test fairness in setting personnel selection standards. Guidelines established by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) are shown to support the use of predictive validity in…

The report evaluates the accuracy with which achievement tests measure social studies learning. Research is based on test items derived from the Social Studies Curriculum Guidelines (1971) and the Multiethnic Guidelines (1976), both prepared by National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). The major objective of the project was to help test…

Cross-referenced to instructional objectives defined in a previous publication, (Guidelines to Mathematics, K-6), the Wisconsin Mathematics Test can be used to measure achievement gains over a given year, or to detect student strengths and weaknesses, by correlating missed items with the objectives. It is also possible to compare results on a…

The Preschool Academic Skills Test was developed from an analysis of first-grade reading and mathematics materials to identify those behaviors that were assumed to be in students' repertoires prior to first grade. The 105 items are grouped in 10 subtests: Vocabulary, Color Naming, Classification, Functional Relationships, Visual Matching, Auditory…

This paper supports the hypothesis that picture vocabulary tests should not be used as interchangeable measures of intelligence for complex, lengthy intelligence tests (WISC and Stanford-Binet). In picture vocabulary tests assessing receptive functions (input), the child recognizes a word by pointing to or stating the number standing for an…

Guidance decisions depend on the validity of standardized tests and teacher judgment records as measures of student achievement. To test this validity, a sample of 400 high school juniors, randomly selected from two large Gulf Coas t area schools, were administered the Iowa Tests of Educational Development. The nine subtest scores and each…

The Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development (SICD), which was designed for remedial programming of children with language disorders, mental retardation, and specific language problems, was given to 13 cerebral palsied preschoolers along with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Time and environmental constraints required considerabLe…

The feasibility of generating multiple-choice test questions by transforming sentences from prose instructional materials was examined. A computer-based algorithm was used to analyze prose subject matter and to identify high-information words. Sentences containing selected words were then transformed into multiple-choice items by four writers who…

A comparison of test results on the Visual Discrimination Test was made between a group of 22 reading disabled children and 22 children who were reading on or above grade level. Both groups were of average or above-average intelligence and the two groups were matched for age and sex. The mean age was 10 years and 3 months and all the reading…