The California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) is a comprehensive youth health risk and resilience data collection service sponsored by the California Department of Education (CDE). This part of the guidebook will assist practitioners in understanding, interpreting, and deriving the maximum benefit from the CHKS results. It provides a basic road map…

In recent years, development has become a cornerstone of the U.S. national security strategy, along with defense and diplomacy. The challenge of development is broader and more multifaceted than it has ever been. It involves not only traditional development--the achievement of economic, social, and political progress--but the added challenges of…

More than ever, educators are expected to make decisions that guarantee quality instruction. As knowledge emerges, so do philosophies, opinions, and rhetoric about definitions of instructional excellence. From policy makers to classroom teachers, educators need ways to separate misinformation from genuine knowledge and to distinguish scientific…

Chapters in this collection provide the perspectives of Caribbean educators on a variety of issues related to the theory and practice of education. Section 1, "Professional Development," contains these chapters: (1) "Is There Still Room for the Model Teacher?" (Sonia Jones); (2) "Using an In-Service Programme To Develop as…

This study examined emotional and social competence in early adolescence, focusing on the relationship between the ability to identify the emotions of another, emotion regulation, friendship quality, and peer-identified prosocial and overtly aggressive behavior. Gender was examined for potential moderator status. Participating in the study were…

A study was conducted to compare the psychometric qualities of two forms of an identical survey: one administered in a paper-and-pencil format and the other administered in Web format. The survey addressed the topic of college course anxiety and used to survey a sample of 236 undergraduate students. The psychometric qualities investigated included…

The purpose of this study was to develop and establish psychometric properties of the Sexual Orientation Counselor Scale (SOCS), an instrument assessing the awareness, skills, and knowledge of counselors working with lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) populations. The sample consisted of 287 undergraduates, master-level students, doctoral-level…

An instrument was developed to investigate the study behavior of high school students. Based on the Study Behavior Inventory (Bliss and Mueller, 1986), a measure designed to examine the study behaviors of college students, the Study Behavior Inventory-High School Version was developed through the contributions of 10 focus groups of high school…

This report describes ongoing research investigating the use of teachers' assignments as an indicator of classroom practice. The purpose of this work is to develop a measure of students' learning environments that potentially could be used to help monitor the influence of school reform efforts on the quality of the classroom learning environment…

This instrument development study had two goals. The first was to develop a measurement tool that would be valid for research and useful for assessment and intervention in classrooms. The second goal was to develop theory in the area of self-regulated learning. Results of preliminary research and study of the literature suggest that metacognitive…

This report is the product of the first year of study of the Statewide Systemic Initiatives (SSI) Study on exploring data and methods to assess and understand the performance of states participating in the SSI. The report describes three sets of studies. The first studied valid and reliable measures of student achievement, and how to combine…

The second edition of "Foundations of Psychological Testing: A Practical Approach" is a text for undergraduate students new to the field of psychological testing. Using a conversational format, the authors aim to prepare students to be informed consumers as test users or test takers. Features new to the second edition include: (1) New Content; (2)…

One of the tasks of the Council for School Performance is to implement measures of school safety to determine the impact of Georgia Lottery for Education expenditures. During the 1994-95 school year, the council pilot-tested several indicators of school safety. This document presents the results of an evaluation that examined the relevance,…

As schools move toward performance assessment, there is increasing discussion of using these assessments for accountability purposes. When used for making decisions, performance assessments must meet high standards of validity and reliability. One major source of unreliability in performance assessments is interrater disagreement. In this paper,…

This paper compares two methods of establishing content validity, forced-choice judgmental review and a latent category judgmental review. It also compares content validity evidence with the results of a scale reliability analysis and makes recommendations of the two content validity procedures. Two different groups of graduate students enrolled…