British psychologists have presented educational psychology as an academic discipline and have distanced themselves from practical teaching. Most have disavowed any particular knowledge about teaching and suggested that teachers themselves should discover the way academic concepts are applied to teaching. As students of human learning, educational…

The development of the Maslowian Scale, a method of revealing a picture of one's needs and concerns based on Abraham Maslow's levels of self-actualization, is described. This paper also explains how the scale is supported by the theories of L. Kohlberg, C. Rogers, and T. Rusk. After a literature search, a list of statements was generated…

In most judgmental methods for setting performance standards, content experts evaluate test items based on a conceptualization of a borderline examinee or a group of examinees. An alternative method is proposed by which judges evaluate items based on the degree of criticality regardless of content area. This classification of items serves to link…

Designed to give guidance to those involved in the curriculum development process within the Shipyard Training Modernization Program (STMP), this guide provides an understanding of the fundamental practices followed in the curriculum development process. It also demonstrates incorrect and correct approaches to the development of the curriculum…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether item difficulty is significantly affected by language difficulty and response set convergence. Language difficulty was varied by increasing sentence (stem) length, increasing syntactic complexity, and substituting uncommon words for more familiar terms in the item stem. Item wording ranged from…

A type of item used frequently in standardized testing involves the recognition of a sentence. Examples of such items are the sentence completion items, used in both the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and the sentence correction items used in the Test of Standard Written English. Tests that contain such…

The current technology of computerized testing is discussed, and a few comments are made on how such technology might be used for assessing school-related skills as part of the National Assessment of Educational progress (NAEP). The critical feature of computerized assessment procedures is that the test items are presented in interactive fashion,…

This report presents the rationale, development, and standardization of the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) Form O. The test is used to select individuals for officer commissioning programs, and candidates for pilot and navigator training. Form O contains 380 items organized in 16 subtests. All items are administered in a single test…

Much more research has been done on the effectiveness of therapeutic techniques than on the client characteristics which mediate the effectiveness of these techniques. Research on client characteristics has concentrated on demographic variables rather than psychological characteristics such as client reactance. The Therapeutic Reactance Scale was…

The goal of test design is to devise an instrument that will provide a stable and accurate assessment of student ability in some area. One means of reaching this goal is through the use of latent trait models, which determine the relationship between the unobservable trait or ability and the observable test performance. Three common latent trait…

The association between Lewis M. Terman and the World Book Company is traced in order to gain insight about the role of test publishing in the testing movement. The test publisher assumes the position of an intermediary between the test developer and the educational administrator responsible for making decisions about test adoption. Terman began…

A model exit examination for a community college English composition course is presented, along with a discussion of the evaluation criteria used and the content areas assessed by the examination. First, methods of objectively evaluating written examinations are discussed, and analytical scoring methods are contrasted with the holistic scoring…

A model for assuring quality in the development of course objectives and classroom and exit examinations is presented. The model was based on a pilot study with 131 faculty at the University of Central Florida. It was found that 91% of teaching faculty create 100% of the tests they use to evaluate student performance. The faculty seemed to use…

Latent trait models are presented that can be used for test design in the context of a theory about the variables that underlie task performance. Examples of methods for decomposing and testing hypotheses about the theoretical variables in task performance are given. The methods can be used to determine the processing components that are involved…

The development and validation of a Portuguese oral language test are described. The test consisted of five item types: personal conversation, giving directions, description of picture sequences, topical discourse, and oral task completion based on printed instructions. Three preliminary forms of the test were administered to a group of language…