The relevance and contribution of the construct of quality of life to assessments and intervention plans for children and youth in school settings are discussed. Theory, measurement, and research related to perceived quality of life (PQOL) are reviewed leading to the contention that PQOL information contributes incremental validity above and…

The last century was marked by dazzling changes in many areas, such as technology and communications. Predictions into the second century of testing are seemingly difficult in such a context. Yet, looking back to the turn of the last century, Kirkpatrick (1900), in his American Psychological Association presidential address, presented fundamental…

This article explores how teachers, students, and other stakeholders collaboratively develop classroom-based assessment procedures for the evaluation of oral skills. By considering crucial issues in assessment such as validity, teacher-learner collaboration, and contextual factors, the authors provide a checklist that will help ESL/EFL teachers…

Educators and therapists implement assistive technology to maximize educational outcomes of students with disabilities. However, few measure the outcomes of interventions because of a lack of valid measurement tools. This study investigated whether an assistive technology supplement for the School Function Assessment demonstrates an important…

This article addresses the capacity of high stakes tests to measure the most significant kinds of learning. It begins by examining a set of philosophical arguments pertaining to construct validity and alleged conceptual obstacles to attributing specific knowledge and skills to learners. The arguments invoke philosophical doctrines of holism and…

The present study examined the persistency of phonological deficiencies over time. The participants were 40 pupils in grade 2 with documented reading and writing difficulties and a comparison group of 30 pupils. The participants were followed over a 10-year period by word- and non-word-reading tests and tests of cognitive ability. The persistence…

This study examined parental report as a source of information about toddlers' productive vocabulary in 105 low-income families living in either urban or rural communities. Parental report using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory-Short Form (CDI) at child age 2;0 was compared to concurrent spontaneous speech measures and…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to validate measures of individual and organisational infrastructure for health promotion within Alberta's (Canada) 17 Regional Health Authorities (RHAs). Design: A series of phases were conducted to develop individual and organisational scales to measure health promotion infrastructure. Instruments were…

The frequency of students' social support has been investigated in the literature, but little research has examined the social validity or social importance of supportive behaviors for children and adolescents. In the present study, data were gathered from 1,688 students in Grades 3 through 12 via the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale…

Objective: This article examines the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Conners' Parent and Teacher Rating Scales-Revised: Short Forms (CPRS-R:S-C and CTRS-R:S-C) in a representative sample of 2,584 first to ninth graders in Taipei and 479 clinical participants (274 with ADHD). Method: The instruments include the CPRS-R:S-C,…

This study extends validity evidence for the Coaching Efficacy Scale (CES; Feltz, Chase, Moritz, & Sullivan, 1999) by providing an evaluation of the psychometric properties of the instrument from previously collected data on high school and college coaches from United States. Data were fitted to a multidimensional item response theory model.…

This study examines the predictive relationships among 309 Asian American and 9471 European American parents' beliefs, expectations, and involvement, and their children's math and reading achievement trajectories during children's transition to school. Data came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), an ongoing…

"Personalised learning" and the value of national assessment data in achieving it have been identified by the UK Secretary of State for Education and Skills as essential for raising educational standards. Employing multilevel analysis, this paper compares children's end of primary school (Key Stage 2) test scores with those they achieved…

The history of risk assessment in criminal justice has been written on several occasions. In this article, the authors assess progress since Andrews, Bonta, and Hoge's statement of the human service principles of risk-need-responsivity (RNR) and professional discretion. The review is conducted in the context of the advent of the fourth generation…

Risk assessments generally rely on actuarial measures of criminal history. However, these static measures do not address changes in risk as a result of intervention. To this end, this study examines the basic psychometric properties of the TCU Criminal Thinking Scales (TCU CTS), a brief (self-rating) instrument developed to assess cognitive…