A description is presented of the construction and use of a questionnaire for evaluating freshman science courses. It uses a forced choice technique to measure student expectations, influence on students, and faculty objectives. Field tests are used to estimate the procedure's validity and reliability. (Author/MSE)

Subtests on grammar, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and translation were developed for screening the English as a second language abilities of students applying to universities outside the U.S. Total test scores, writing ability, and grade point average were used as criteria for evaluating each subtest's validity. (GSK)

Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory items which differentiated between males and females by more than nine percentage points were removed in an attempt to develop a unisex occupational scale for pharmacists. The remaining items formed a unisex scale nearly as reliable and valid as the original, over short term periods. (MH)

Paracognitive evaluation of medical training recognizes the linkage between training and specific maturational trends. After administering the Paracognitive Evaluation Form to assess medical students' performance in seminars and clinical teaching situations, hierarchical cluster analysis suggested that maturational trends were measured and that…

Rankings by faculty members of scholarship and profesionalism of doctoral recipients were correlated with age, undergraduate and graduate grade point average, and Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) scores. Results indicated age was negatively correlated, grades were positively correlated, and GRE scores were positively correlated. (JKS)

Eight ambiguous items in the 16-item Inconditionality of Regard Scale of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory were rewritten to see if the relationship of that scale to others in the inventory would change. The hypothesis that the relationships would change was upheld. (The eight original and eight modified items are included). (JKS)

The problem associated with validating an admissions test when such validation is based solely on the scores of the accepted, and therefore, restricted, group of applicants is demonstrated. A correction formula that estimates the correlation between admission test scores and a subsequent measure of performance for the entire group of applicants is…

Two measures of community-based social behavior for adolescents and young adults with emotional and behavioral disorders, the male and female forms of the Test of Community-Based Social Skill Knowledge and the Scale of Community-Based Social Skill Performance, were examined. Results found the measures yielded acceptable reliabilities and exhibited…

Critiques William Mehrens' 1992 article on performance assessment, claiming that Mehrens professes to favor performance assessment but only as an afterthought to traditional assessment, and Mehrens' view of traditional assessment limits his portrayal of performance assessment. The paper encourages the research community to support performance…

Examined the validity of the pragmatic approach to test difficulty put forward by Child (1987). This study investigated whether the Child discourse-type hierarchy predicts text difficulty for second-language readers. Results suggested that this hierarchy may provide a sound basis for developing foreign-language tests when it is applied by trained…

Fifty education majors in two sections responded to an Attitudes toward Mathematics and Its Teaching (ATMAT) scale. Results with two psychometric models, classical true-score theory and the one-parameter Rasch model, supported the ATMAT's reliability, content and construct validity, and invariance over three time points. (SLD)

Suggests explanations for derailment of the self-continuity warranting process. Maintains that although Chandler's studies used important concepts without sufficient evidence for construct validity, such use may be justified by the need to address the high Native youth suicide rate. Concludes that Chandler et al. have begun to validate a measure…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) was administered to 175 Navajo children at 2 reservation elementary schools. Local normative information was developed to reduce test bias associated with the English-laden content in the test. A procedure was developed for converting WISC-III scores, enabling comparison of…

The agreement between the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI- R) and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) was investigated in the diagnostic assessment of 54 children (ages 22-114 months) referred for possible autism. The observed agreement between the two systems was 66.7%. The CARS identified more cases of autism than the ADI-R.…

Obtained intelligence scale scores to predict academic achievement scores on a comprehensive testing program given at the end of grades one, two, and three. Results show that correlations between achievement and verbal IQ are significant at all three grade levels. Findings indicate that verbal abilities are more predictive of academic achievement…