Attempts to improve a set of patient assault vignettes for a simulation by developing and testing a control version of the vignettes and exploring additional question and alternative scoring procedures. Influences of victim gender and assault severity are examined for 58 neuropsychiatric hospital nurses and 12 mental health experts. (SLD)

Behavioral intentions of 100 families regarding out-of-home placement for their child or early adolescent with severe handicaps were tracked 4 times over 6 years with the Placement Tendency Index, to assess the dynamics of family behavioral change. The index had long-term modest predictive capacity but increased predictive utility over shorter…

Preliminary evidence supports the construct validity of two versions of the Simulation of Interactive Decision Making (group tests of interactive teaching competencies that simulate classroom decision making processes more realistically than traditional tests). Evidence of construct validity reflects differences among subjects with various amounts…

There is considerable opinion that standardized test scores do not predict academic performance as well for African American students as for white students. A study correlating Scholastic Assessment Test scores and grades for samples of black students in 15 colleges, 7 predominantly black and 8 predominantly white, found that tests' predictive…

Reviews findings on the predictive validity of psychometric tests of intelligence. Concludes that conventional tests of intelligence can be useful but only if they are interpreted very carefully, taking into account the factors that can affect them, and in conjunction with other measures. (Author)

Examines the definition of fluency in the literature, and proposes a qualitative and quantitative approach that may be used to produce a "thick" description of language use for use in rating scale construction. The article suggests that validity considerations must be addressed in the construction phase of developing scales. (69 references)…

The Cognitive Profiling System (CoPS 1) is a psychometric assessment/screening system presented in the form of computer games to children in their early school years in order to predict the probability of later learning difficulties of both a general and specific nature (Singleton, Horne, & Thomas, 1999). Although some evidence is available as…

Curriculum-based measures have been validated for use in evaluating reading, mathematics, and writing skills (Marston, 1989). Despite its common use by school psychologists (Wilson & Reschly, 1996), the relationship between the Woodcock Johnson-Revised and curriculum-based measures of writing has not been evaluated. This study investigated the…

The authors used a rational-empirical approach to construct the Student Readiness Inventory, measuring psychosocial and academic-related skill factors found to predict two important college outcomes, academic performance and retention, in a recent meta-analysis. The initial item pool was administered to 5,970 first-year college students and high…

When efficacious interventions are implemented in real-world conditions, it is important to evaluate whether or not the programs are practiced as intended. This article presents the Fidelity of Implementation Rating System (FIMP), an observation-based measure assessing competent adherence to the Oregon model of Parent Management Training (PMTO).…

Objective: This study examined the cross-ethnic measurement equivalence of the Shortform Assessment for Children (SAC) using a sample of 562 African American and 692 White children. Method: A prospective, two-panel survey design was used in this study. Baseline and 6-month follow-up data were used to conduct analyses of the reliability and…

The idea that validity should be considered a property of inferences, rather than of assessments, has developed slowly over the past century. In early writings about the validity of educational assessments, validity was defined as a property of an assessment. The most common definition was that an assessment was valid to the extent that it…

This article describes a longitudinal analysis of a nationally representative cohort of over 80,000 pupils in England who completed both national end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) tests and the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) at age 11 in 1997, national end of Key Stage 3 (KS3) tests at age 14 in summer 2000 and General Certificate of Secondary Education…

The development process and initial validation of the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale (BPNES) are presented in this study. The BPNES is a domain-specific self-report instrument designed to assess perceptions of the extent to which the innate needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000) are satisfied in…

Concerns over equity, access, and fairness of placement testing have resulted in state regulations requiring validity evidence of the placement test with respect to a criterion variable, such as final course grades. A study was conducted to assess the validity of placement tests used to place students in pre-collegiate and college-level English…