This study examined the psychometric properties of performance measures for three novel, interactive virtual reality vignette exercises developed to assess social competency skills of at-risk adolescents. Performance data were collected from 117 African-American male 15-17 year olds. Data for 18 performance measures were obtained, based on…

The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to evaluate the educational program's training. The program used for this purpose was the Olympic Education Program, which has been implemented in Greek primary and secondary schools since 2000. First, the face validity of items was evaluated, second, the pool of the items selected was factor…

Despite the current legislation requiring sex education as part of the school curriculum in Portugal, great obstacles to its implementation remain. Furthermore, sex education is far from being systematically administered. Thus, the main interest in our project was to validate a scale that measures teachers' attitudes towards sex education. There…

Most psychosocial research on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has focused on deficits in school, family, or behavioral functioning without incorporating perceived quality of life (QoL) or the adolescents' perspective. The Youth Quality of Life Instrument-Research Version (YQOL-R), was used to assess self-perceived QoL in a…

Objective: There is no validated self-report measure of parental psychological control in the Chinese culture. The reliability and validity of the Chinese Paternal Psychological Control Scale (CPPCS) and Chinese Maternal Psychological Control Scale (CMPCS) were examined. Method: A total of 3,017 Chinese secondary school students responded to the…

Learning performance assessment aims to evaluate what knowledge learners have acquired from teaching activities. Objective technical measures of learning performance are difficult to develop, but are extremely important for both teachers and learners. Learning performance assessment using learning portfolios or web server log data is becoming an…

In this paper, we conceptualize and develop an index of sociodemographic risk that we hypothesize will be an improvement over the standard poverty measure as a measure of risk for children's development. The poverty line is widely used in government statistics and in research but is also widely acknowledged to have multiple shortcomings. Using…

Within an evidentiary framework for operationally defining academic English language proficiency (AELP), linguistic analyses of standards, classroom discourse, and textbooks have led to specifications for assessment of AELP. The test development process described here is novel due to the emphasis on using linguistic profiles to inform the …

Adult secondary education learners approach the goal of college-level postsecondary education through three assessment gateways: (a) measures of adult education program learning gains, (b) a high-school equivalency exam, and (c) college placement tests. On the surface, the assessments in this sequence might appear to work in concert and point…

The purpose of the NMSBA technical report is to provide users and other interested parties with a general overview of and technical characteristics of the 2007 NMSBA. The 2007 technical report contains the following information: (1) Test development; (2) Scoring procedures; (3) Summary of student performance; (4) Statistical analyses of item and…

In this article, the author echoes his co-author's and colleague's pleasure (Hill, this issue) at the thoughtfulness and far-ranging nature of the comments to their initial attempts at test validation for the mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) measures using the validity argument approach. Because of the large number of commentaries they…

With the increasing globalization of human resources practices, a commensurate increase in demand has occurred for multi-language ("global") personality norms for use in selection and development efforts. The combination of data from multiple translations of a personality assessment into a single norm engenders error from multiple sources. This…

This manual describes the Wisconsin Sensorimotor Pointing Assessment (WSPA) for individuals with severe communication deficits complicated by other cognitive or motor disabilities, and provides guidelines for its administration. The WSPA was designed to quantify four categories of sensory and motor abilities necessary for initiating and accurately…

Educational research among indigenous peoples has often been flawed. Many studies on achievement motivation, cognitive development, and learning styles have failed to establish that the behaviors and responses being measured were functionally, conceptually, or metrically equivalent to those from which norms for comparison were drawn, and that the…

The report of the National Academy of Education (NAE), "Setting Performance Standards for Student Achievement," provides an interpretation of NAE investigations into the procedures surrounding establishment of achievement levels for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAE report synthesizes the investigations of…