Attitudes to science scales developed in England have been used in a rural region of South Africa with children aged 10 and 11 years in a two-stage data collection investigation. Cultural constraints on the use of "foreign" scales are explored. Factor analyses reveal differences between the South African and English children. A South…

The New Standards Project (NSP) is an effort to create a state- and district-based assessment and professional development system to serve as a catalyst for major educational reform. As part of a professional development strategy tied to assessment, 114 teachers, curriculum supervisors, and assessment directors, representing 23 states and…

Background: In this article we address some of the challenges posed by the development of national assessment systems and discuss the need for high quality information on trends in attainment; support for school improvement processes and ways in which learning should be enhanced through valid assessment. Purpose: Key elements are explored,…

This article empirically validates an existing content analysis scheme and addresses a main concern of researchers about text-based, online transcripts in the form of code-recoding by mapping our scheme to the practical inquiry, cognitive presence model's five phases directly to realise higher-order thinking or critical thinking aspects for our…

The purpose of this study is to develop an attitude scale toward Internet-based learning (IBL) and to investigate whether attitude levels of Turkish distance learners in an IBL environment differ according to their demographical characteristics (i.e. age, gender, marital status, parental status, employment status, grade point average (GPA).…

People can use a variety of different strategies to perform tasks and these strategies all have two characteristics in common. First, they can be evaluated in comparison with either an absolute or a relative standard. Second, they can be used at varying levels of consistency. In the present article, the authors develop a general theory of task…

Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) has been recommended as one vehicle with which to evaluate special education and other intervention impacts (M. J. Taylor and M. S. Innocenti, 1993). Common misinterpretations of this methodology for these purposes are explained. These misapplications of ANCOVA include: (1) ignoring the assumption of homogeneity of…

This paper lays out a framework for comparing the qualities and the quantities of information about student competence provided by multiple-choice and free-response test items. After discussing the origins of multiple-choice testing and recent influences for change, the paper outlines an "inference network" approach to test theory, in…

The Perception of Parental Reciprocity Scale (POPRS) was originally developed with a late adolescent population to assess the extent of perceived reciprocity in adolescent-parent relations. This study examined the reliability and validity of using POPRS with younger adolescents. Subjects, 655 males and 636 females ranging in age from 13 to 18,…

This report provides an overview of the research on the testimony of young children in cases of sexual abuse, focusing on preschoolers' presumed suggestibility and the role of researchers and mental health professionals as expert witnesses in such cases. It does so in light of the McMartin preschool case, in which seven defendants were acquitted,…

The development of the Home and Family Questionnaire (HFQ) is described and exploratory factor analyses and initial reliability studies are reported. The HFQ, which incorporates many of the items from the HOME Observation Inventory for Elementary School Children developed by B. M. Caldwell and R. H. Bradley (1984), evaluates home setting and home…

In July 1994, College of the Canyons (COC) in California conducted several predictive validity studies of the College Board Assessment and Placement Services (APS) Reading Test. COC began using the 35-question objective format test in spring 1993. Fall 1993 test scores were used in determining the ability of the APS Reading Test to predict student…

If a student writes two essays, the score reliability can be estimated from the correlation between essays. However, if the essays are in different modes or require different skills, the reliability may be underestimated from the correlation. In Advanced Placement history examinations, students wrote one standard essay and one essay that required…

The stability of bias estimates from J. Schueneman's chi-square method, the transformed Delta method, Rasch's one-parameter residual analysis, and the Mantel-Haenszel procedure, were compared across small and large samples for a data set of 30,000 cases. Bias values for 30 samples were estimated for each method, and means and variances of item…

Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) were developed to score responses from a previously designed police written communication test that lacked reliability. Rating scales for each of the 9 dimensions of the test consisted of the scale definition and a 5-point continuum, with the scores of 5, 3, and 1 defined by specified behavioral…