The Neglect Scale was designed as a measure of neglect of children's basic needs by caretakers. It measures neglect of physical, emotional, supervisory, and cognitive needs. The version of the Neglect Scale described in this report can be used in interview or questionnaire format with adolescents to describe their current situations or with adults…

This paper describes the General Educational Development (GED) Testing Service's Spanish Test Adaptation Project. The GED Tests are designed to give those who have not graduated from high school the opportunity to earn a diploma that is recognized by institutions of higher education and employers. The purpose of this project is to develop, based…

The report details development and validation of a test designed to assess the ability to comprehend and summarize, in English, recorded conversations spoken in Taiwanese. The language and topics of the exam are representative of conversations that federal law enforcement or intelligence agencies may need to monitor in this language. The report is…

This study evaluated the Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP) as a source of data on children. The evaluation sought to determine whether SIPP provides reasonable estimates of the child population, by comparing estimates derived from SIPP with estimates derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Specifically, children living in…

The psychometric properties of the testing tools of the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP), the state standardized testing program, are examined. Reliability studies have indicated that the scores from the MEAP, ranging from 0.654 to 0.949, are generally acceptable. The State Department of Education offered supporting evidence for the…

The initial development of a testlet-based algebra test was previously reported (Wainer and Lewis, 1990). This account provides the details of this excursion into the use of hierarchical testlets and validity-based scoring. A pretest of two 15-item hierarchical testlets was carried out in which examinees' performance on a 4-item subset of each…

This guide has the broad purpose of improving large-scale academic assessments for limited-English-proficient (LEP) students. It was written because large-scale assessments are studded with problems that affect not only how equitable the achievement of LEP students can be measured, but also how effectively LEP students' mastery of content is…

This digest is designed to provide information to Texas testing coordinators, other educators, and interested citizens about the development procedures and technical attributes of the state-mandated criterion-referenced assessment program. The chapters are: (1) "Background"; (2) "Test Development"; (3) "Test…

The percent and characteristics of children who produced invalid profiles on two different continuous performance tests (CPTs) tasks were examined. Sixty-one children referred for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessment and 24 non-clinical control children (all children ages 5-16) were given the Test of Variables of Attention…

In response to the greatly increased use of statewide high stakes testing, the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Virginia developed differentiated authentic assessments for middle school classroom use that embodied key concepts, principles, generalizations, and processes in the disciplines of English/language…

This paper considers the influence of the values and the discourse behaviors of the native-speaking assessor as interlocutor. These variables in the assessments of oral proficiency interrelate in complex ways with features of test design such as tasks, prompts, topics, guidelines, and assessor training. This paper reviews some previous studies,…

The Scale for Assessing Emotional Disturbances (SAED) is a standardized, norm-referenced scale used to identify children who qualify for the federal special education category of "emotional disturbance". It uses the five conditions on which identification of emotional disturbance is based under the Individuals with Disabilities Education…

This paper provides an overview of the types of testing accommodations used for students with disabilities and presents arguments for and against their use. It begins by discussing student participation in educational assessments and federal requirements concerning the participation of students with disabilities. The types of accommodations are…

A formative committee conducted a developmental study to produce a program evaluation instrument (PEI) that would be effective in conducting an adult basic education (ABE) program evaluation study at Nicolet Area Technical College (NATC). Five procedures were used to complete this product. First, a literature review was conducted that assisted in…

Second language (L2) computer-adaptive testing (CAT) is a technologically advanced method of assessment in which the computer selects and presents test items to examinees according to the estimated level of the examinee's language ability. The basic notion of an adaptive test is to mimic automatically what a wise examiner would normally do.…