The present investigation represents a systematic effort to determine whether handicapped children have been included in the development of test norms, items, and indices of reliability and validity. It analysed up-to-date user manuals and technical supplements of 27 well known and widely used aptitude and achievement tests. Study procedure…

Examined the reliability and validity of the Work Sampling System (WSS) for evaluating the schoolwork of 100 kindergarten children. Results indicated that the WSS checklist and summary report had very high internal and moderately high interrater reliability. The WSS accurately predicted the performance of the children on a norm-referenced…

Issues pertaining to the quality of performance assessments, including reliability and validity, are discussed. The relatively limited generalizability of performance across tasks is indicative of the care needed to evaluate performance assessments. Quality control is an empirical matter when measurement is intended to inform public policy. (SLD)

A renewed focus on foreign language (FL) learning and speech for communication has resulted in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) software developed with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). ASR features for FL pronunciation (Lafford, 2004) are functional components of CALL designs used for FL teaching and learning. The ASR features…

This article argues that intervention pilot test evaluations have focused insufficient attention on the measurement of project fidelity and the subsequent use of fidelity results for (a) interpreting variations in project outcomes and (b) understanding the rationale for teachers' deviations from implementation protocols. The authors report on the…

Background: Every physician in Ontario needs to know how to fill out a Form 1 in order to legally hold a person against their will for a psychiatric assessment. These forms are frequently inaccurately filled out, which could constitute wrongful confinement and, in extreme circumstances, could lead to fines as large as $25,000. Training people to…

Teacher rating scales have been used widely throughout the United States as part of a comprehensive plan for identifying potentially gifted and talented students. The Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics for Superior Students (SRBCSS) are among the most frequently used teacher rating scales to assess the characteristics of and nominate…

This study investigated a new 2-factor construct, termed "cultural congruence", which is related to cultural competence in the delivery of mental health services to ethnic minority clients. Cultural congruence was defined as the distance between the cultural competence characteristics of the health care organization and the clients' perception of…

Teachers' competence to estimate the effectiveness of learning materials is important and often neglected in programmes for teacher education. In this lecture I will try to explore the possibilities of designing scaffolding instruments for a "priori" assessment of language learning tasks, based on insights from SLA and cognitive psychology, more…

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how a valid and reliable state accountability system could be developed that identifies effective schools and school districts in a comprehensive, understandable, and practical way. The author presents an overview of the strategy used in the analysis, discusses the use of education production functions…

Objective: This study describes the development of an engagement scale for use with youth in residential treatment centers. Engagement includes attitude about treatment, bond with providers, and participation in treatment activities. Method: Interview data were collected at the midpoint in residence of 130 youth in two centers. Items were selected…

This paper discusses the fact that reliability is about scores and not tests and how reliability limits effect sizes. The paper also explores the classical reliability coefficients of stability, equivalence, and internal consistency. Stability is concerned with how stable test scores will be over time, while equivalence addresses the relationship…

This paper presents three different ways of computing the internal consistency coefficient alpha for a same set of data. The main objective of the paper is the illustration of a method for maximizing coefficient alpha. The maximization of alpha can be achieved with the aid of a principal component analysis. The relation between alpha max. and the…

A model is proposed for the description of ordinal test scores based on the definition of true score as expected rank; its deviations are compared with results from classical test theory. An unbiased estimator of population true score from sample data is calculated. Score variance and population reliability are examined. (Author/BJG)

Responses of male prisoners to the Personal Orientation Inventory were clustered, using hierarchical linkage analysis. Six second-order clusters accounted for all the items. Reliabilities of these clusters were comparable to those of the first-order clusters. Relative validity of cluster scores and scale scores remains to be determined. (RC)