The American College Testing Program (ACT) routinely evaluates the fit of its tests to the curriculum of high schools nationwide to ensure that what is being assessed reflects what is being taught as necessary for college success. This report describes the steps ACT has taken to ensure that the content foundations of the ACT Assessment Mathematics…

Self-study is defined as participant study of practice, and it has often been questioned as a form of research. Whether self-study can be valid when generalized or whether it merely represents personal reflections was explored in a case study. During a year as a teacher of secondary students, the researcher/participants kept a journal as part of a…

This report provides an overview of a selection of measurement error studies conducted on National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) surveys. Its intent is not to offer new analyses of program data, but to summarize information from internal memoranda, working papers, and adjudicated reports about errors of measurement that occur during five…

A study examined the utility of Holland's hexagonal model as a culturally appropriate theoretical framework for U.S. career psychologists working with Asian international students. Chinese-descent international students enrolled in three Southeastern universities (n=170) completed three instruments: Holland's Self-Directed Search (SDS), an…

This study aims to evaluate the degree to which the achievement level descriptions adopted by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) for the 1992 assessment in mathematics accurately represent what students at a given achievement level can do. NAGB descriptions of the levels were used to form lists of statements about what students at a…

New methods are needed to judge the quality of alternative student assessment, methods which complement the philosophy underlying authentic assessments. This paper examines assumptions underlying validity, reliability, and objectivity, and why they are not matched to authentic assessment, concentrating on the constructivist paradigm of E. Guba and…

This collection contains four papers that were presented as part of a short course delivered at the 1991 annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association. The papers discuss various aspects of the development and use of "The Competent Speaker," a public speaking assessment instrument designed for the college sophomore level. The papers and…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) is an individually administered test of intelligence for assessing children aged 6 through 16 years, 11 months. The WISC-III consists of several subtests, each classified into a verbal or performance scale. The child's performance on these measures is summarized in three…

The concept of a user-specified validity sector is discussed. The idea of the validity sector combines the work of M. D. Reckase (1986) and R. Shealy and W. Stout (1991). Reckase developed a methodology to represent an item in a multidimensional latent space as a vector. Item vectors are computed using multidimensional item response theory item…

Use of the School Climate and Context Inventory (SCCI) as a measure of school climate was investigated. The SCCI had previously been used as a measure of climate in a study of six rural high schools in Kentucky and Tennessee; in the current study, the SCCI was administered to 20 faculty members from each school. Split-half correlation and…

Several techniques for conducting studies of measurement integrity are explained and illustrated using a heuristic data set from a study of teachers' participation in decision making (D. L. Taylor, 1991). The sample consisted of 637 teachers. It is emphasized that validity and reliability are characteristics of data, and do not inure to tests as…

Child care costs place a heavy burden on working families with young children. This study investigated relationships among income, cost of living, and child care costs in families who purchased center-based child care. Subjects were 720 families from Massachusetts, Georgia, and Virginia. Parents were interviewed separately to obtain information on…

As high-stakes use of tests increases, it becomes vital that test developers and test users communicate clearly about the accuracy and limitations of the scores generated by a test after it is assembled and used. A procedure is described for portraying the accuracy of test scores. It can be used in setting accuracy targets during form construction…

This paper reviews issues in student satisfaction and evaluation of faculty as factors in determining instructional quality. It is based on a recent controversy at the University of Calgary (Alberta) which centered around the proposed publication of the results of student evaluations of faculty (SEFs) and was intended to help students, as…

Career decision making is an important aspect of life. At some point one must decide what type of job to apply for or whether to seek education for a specific career. Many individuals struggle with these decisions. Unfortunately, multidimensional measures of uncertainty are needed in providing guidance to such persons, because it appears the…