A detailed description is provided of the variable school's demographic setting (DB), which is part of the analysis in phase I of the Evaluation of Practices in Individualized Schooling. The variable is defined; the questionnaires on which the variable is based are listed; the procedures used to scale the variable are explained; the distribution…

This fifty-item test is intended for the 'Responsibility' unit of the 'Law in a Free Society' materials published by the California Bar Association. The test was administered as a pre- and post-test to more than 600 grade 11 students. The pre-test data for all students were item-analyzed and the results are made available along with a table of…

Expository passages containing either main point inconsistencies, detail inconsistencies, or no inconsistencies were presented sentence by sentence to 90 college students. Subjects read through the passages at their own pace and were encouraged to reread sections of text whenever they wished. As expected, subjects spent more time on sentences…

Intended to help educators select diagnostic and criterion referenced reading tests for their specific purposes, this book contains reviews of nine individual and three group tests. The reviewed tests were selected for their "importance" from a list of 34 and were reviewed by experts according to their descriptions of content, test development,…

Arguments against competency testing surface continually, and classic counter-arguments reoccur. Nevertheless, minimum competency testing and other accountability efforts have much public support. Those claiming that the tests are not relevant or do not have predictive validity, also say they are coachable and biased. Answers are given to these…

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between the unreliability of difference scores and the power of tests of significance in an attempt to determine the validity of the paradox for the measurement of change presented by Overall and Woodward: that the power of tests of significance is maximum when the reliability of the…

The construction and evaluation of the Perception of Social Closeness Scale (PSCS) is described. The PSCS, designed to measure classroom social distance, is modeled after the Classroom Social Distance Scale and is constructed in a manner to be used with classroom teachers. Following a description of the scale's development, items were selected to…

An alternate-choice test item is a simple declarative sentence, one portion of which is given with two different wordings. For example, "Foundations like Ford and Carnegie tend to be (1) eager (2) hesitant to support innovative solutions to educational problems." The examinee's task is to choose the alternative that makes the sentence…

The development of a new instrument, the Statements About Schools Inventory (SAS) is described. The SAS measures the extent to which high schools meet the needs of their students for a safe, stable environment (security scale), for interpersonal relationships (social scale), for success and achievement (esteem scale), and for personal growth (self…

To make training cost-effective for its small systems customers, Digital Equipment Corporation provides self-paced training packages for several years that can be used by its customers on-site. To control the quality of this training, Digital is now incorporating computer managed instruction (CMI) into some of these packages. This CMI component…

Analyses of 212 reports of crime incidents from the 1974 Portland, Oregon, victimization survey were conducted. These were matched with official crime reports of the same incidents. The record check described and analyzed the following: differences between survey and police data; the frequency of "don't know" responses; patterns of telescoping and…

Data are presented evaluating the validity and reliability of the Personality Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ), a self-report questionnaire designed to elicit respondents' perceptions of themselves with respect to seven personality and behavioral dispositions: hostility and aggression, dependence, self-esteem, self-adequacy, emotional…

Brief guidelines for the selection of norm referenced tests are offered. Four considerations in selecting an appropriate test are: (1) appropriateness of test content; (2) appropriateness of the norm group; (3) test reliability; and (4) ease of administration. (MH)

In large-scale surveys, it is no longer uncommon for repeated measurements to be obtained from respondents and analyses performed to gauge the magnitiude of nonsampling errors. This is particularly true for periodic surveys and longitudinal surveys where a very large investment in data collection is made. This technical note, aimed at the analysis…

The Alpha Omega Completed Sentence Form (AOCSF) was developed to identify and measure a person's adaptational approaches to information concerning their own death or the possible death of a significant other. In contrast to the Kubler-Ross stage theory, the adaptational approach recognizes a person's capacity to assimilate new information which…