Developed an instrument to measure the well-being of the aged. The Philadelphia Geriatric Center Multilevel Assessment Instrument (MAI) assesses behavioral competence in health, daily activities, cognition, time use, and social interaction. Performance of 590 older people determined the MAI is useful for research and assessment in service-giving…

In this study, generalizability theory is used to examine the dependability of student rating data for making judgments about courses and instruction. The importance of giving adequate attention to the specification of the universe of admissible observations in generalizability theory is discussed. (Author/CTM)

Over 2,000 writing samples were collected from four undergraduate institutions and compared, where possible, with scores on a multiple-choice test. High correlations between ratings of the writing samples and multiple-choice test scores were obtained. Samples contributed substantially to the prediction of both college grades and writing…

Classroom behavior was observed over a six-month period in 68 junior high school classes to determine (a) the temporal stability of the behavioral indexes and (b) reliable trends over the school year. A certain deterioration occurs in late spring and observations obtained in midyear are less likely to be distorted. (Author/GK)

A study is reported that investigates the validity of written simulations designed to evaluate the problem-solving behavior of pharmacy students studying therapeutics. Results with the written simulations are correlated with test scores from the course's objective examinations and with clinical clerkship evaluations. (JMD)

The Children's Adaptive Behavior Scale is described, and statistics based on children aged 6 through 10 with IQ's 50 to 89 are presented to show the relationship of scores to chronological age, the low relationship with intelligence, and the negligible relationship with race or sex. (CTM)

A description is presented of the construction and use of a questionnaire for evaluating freshman science courses. It uses a forced choice technique to measure student expectations, influence on students, and faculty objectives. Field tests are used to estimate the procedure's validity and reliability. (Author/MSE)

Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory items which differentiated between males and females by more than nine percentage points were removed in an attempt to develop a unisex occupational scale for pharmacists. The remaining items formed a unisex scale nearly as reliable and valid as the original, over short term periods. (MH)

Two sources of inconsistency were separated by reanalyzing data from a major study on short-term consistency. Little evidence was found for generalizability or behavioral predictability. Results supported the assumption that measurement error from short-term fluctuations is not due to systematic individual differences in response consistency.…

Paracognitive evaluation of medical training recognizes the linkage between training and specific maturational trends. After administering the Paracognitive Evaluation Form to assess medical students' performance in seminars and clinical teaching situations, hierarchical cluster analysis suggested that maturational trends were measured and that…

Two measures of community-based social behavior for adolescents and young adults with emotional and behavioral disorders, the male and female forms of the Test of Community-Based Social Skill Knowledge and the Scale of Community-Based Social Skill Performance, were examined. Results found the measures yielded acceptable reliabilities and exhibited…

Conflicting policy decisions, scaling difficulties, teacher resistance, and mediocre results are slowing adoption of authentic student-evaluation measures. With more conservative state leadership, California and Arizona rejected performance assessment, and other states have followed. Despite various setbacks, new assessments are becoming the norm.…

Three studies compared the common Likert agree/disagree question form to a behavioral observation form for faculty evaluation. The Likert-type format prompted global, impressionistic responses; the behavioral observation form prompted more objective responses. Results suggest use of behavioral observation rather than agree/disagree questions can…

Fifty education majors in two sections responded to an Attitudes toward Mathematics and Its Teaching (ATMAT) scale. Results with two psychometric models, classical true-score theory and the one-parameter Rasch model, supported the ATMAT's reliability, content and construct validity, and invariance over three time points. (SLD)

Presents an overview of the variables that contribute to the complexity of English-as-a-Second-Language writing assessment design. (63 references) (Author/CK)