Definitions of social skills and conceptualizations of social skill deficiencies are presented, along with an overview of social skills assessment, articles on the assessment of social skills with handicapped and nonhandicapped children, and a variety of social skills assessment instruments. Discussed are the following five methods of assessing…

The Brand Emotions Scale for Writers (BSEW) is a 20-item scale designed to measure the emotions of writers; (1) immediately before writing (state-before), (2) immediately after writing (state-after), and (3) when writing in general (trait). This paper describes the development of BSEW and the factor structure of these three different forms. Common…

The relative effectiveness of four instructional methods for increasing the interpersonal vocational skills of 122 mildly retarded high school students was investigated. Curriculum packages featured (1) verbal presentation of problematic social situations, (2) verbal presentation coupled with behavior rehearsal, (3) videotape vignettes of problem…

This paper reports on a short version of the Student Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS), a multiple choice questionnaire that measures Type A "coronary-prone" behavior in assessing subjects' A/B types. The primary objective was to determine if the short and long forms of the student JAS represent similar measurement instruments. A secondary…

Six studies are presented which investigate factors in implementing the Revolving Door Identification Model (RDIM) and the Enrichment Triad Model in gifted education for children in grades 1-8. In "An Analysis of the Productivity of Gifted Students Participating in Programs Using the Revolving Door Identification Model," S. Reis reports,…

Generalizability theory, which subsumes classical measurement theory as a special case, provides a general model for estimating the reliability of observational rating data by estimating the variance components of the measurement design. Research data from the "Heart Smart" health intervention program were analyzed as a heuristic tool.…

Local teachers and other school personnel in Hawaii expressed a need for operational guidelines to use in deciding whether or not to refer students for diagnostic evaluations for specific learning disabilities (SLD). This project was designed to evaluate whether the Windward Rating Scale (WRS), a locally-developed teacher rating scale of student…

There are two purposes for this study: first, to examine the relationship between college students' achievement and their ratings of instructors; second, to validate the two selected evaluation instruments that were designed specially for assessing teaching performance at the higher education level. Two evaluation inventories were selected for…

Screening refers here to the process of making an initial selection of those who need further diagnostic evaluations. A screening process which effectively selects true learning disability (LD) cases from a population reduces the number of incorrectly selected non-LD children who would be needlessly given costly psychoeducational evaluations.…

Instruments used to rate college teachers should undergo the scientific scrutiny expected of any psychological instrument. The construction of rating instruments through collective bargaining without scientific pilot testing thwarts the desired goal of assisting faculty and administrators in learning about teaching performance. These contentions…

One problem in the assessment of personality characteristics is the lack of predictive power of scales across time and situations with respect to overt behavior. Items from two scales of the Edwards Personality Inventory (Articulate and Center of Attention) considered suitable for behavioral assessment, were found to have a relatively high rate of…

A questionnaire containing all 78 items from the three forms of Robert F. Bales' Interpersonal Rating Forms (IRF) was administered to 266 college students to test the reliability and validity of the IRF. The questions asked for self-perceptions about one's roles and behaviors in task groups. The results indicated that the scales are neither…

The paper describes development of the Pupil Observation Schedule (POS), a computer based system which provides a framework for assessing, evaluating, and reporting behavioral progress of emotionally disturbed students. The POS is used to rate five skill areas--computation, language, reading, reference, and psychomotor skills; and nine behavioral…

Many criticisms of Fiedler's contingency model focus upon the LPC (Least Preferred Coworker) scale. The characteristics of the LPC scale were investigated in two studies. Experiment 1 focused upon determining the factor structure of LPC and relevance ratings, while Experiment 2 dealt with relationships among LPC, relevance, and self-ratings.…

Factors associated with the speed and level of difficulty with which individuals adjust to separation and divorce were investigated. A scale was developed to analyze these factors, and included items dealing with the subdimensions of stress and the perception of the persons involved. Factor analysis of the scale items as well as additional tests…