The Test of Pragmatic Language (TOPL) is an individually administered instrument designed to assess pragmatic language skills that can be used with students in kindergarten through high school. It is more specifically intended for use with children, adolescents, and adults with learning disabilities, language delays, reading difficulties, or…

Although reliability and validity are characteristics of test data, social scientists often attribute reliability and validity erroneously to the tests themselves. To determine the extent to which this problem exists, 150 reliability and validity studies selected from 3 prominent social science measurement journals over a 3-year period were…

Abuses and misuses of statistics are frequent. This digest attempts to warn against these in three broad classes of pitfalls: sources of bias, errors of methodology, and misinterpretation of results. Sources of bias are conditions or circumstances that affect the external validity of statistical results. In order for a researcher to make…

In educational research and evaluation, a sample of subjects usually received some type of programmatic treatment. Outcome scores for these students are then compared with outcome scores of a control or comparison group. M. Lewis and H. McGurk (1972) have pointed out that there are some implicit assumptions when this approach is applied to…

During the past 6 years, under a contract from the National Center for Education Statistics, a Technical Review Panel has overseen and conducted a series of research studies addressing a range of validity questions relevant to the various uses and interpretations of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Study topics included: (1)…

The National Assessment Governing Board and the National Center for Education Statistics sponsored a Joint Conference on Standard Setting for Large-Scale Assessments to provide a forum for technical and policy issues relevant to setting standards at local, state, and national levels. Volume I contains an executive summary of the conference and…

The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is used to assess the behavioral problems and social competencies of children. Its broad usage in both practitioner and research contexts has led to misapplications as compared to the CBCL's original intended purpose. In addition, the composition of the normative sample presents particular difficulties for…

The reliability and validity of three short forms of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III (WISC-III) were compared. Each of the short forms was a tetrad composed of two verbal and two performance subtests. The first tetrad was selected based primarily on practical considerations, particularly its brevity to administer and score. The…

Results of cognitive diagnoses were validated using the rule-space model, and the usefulness of cognitive diagnosis for instruction was demonstrated. Through preliminary studies, 33 stages of knowledge were defined as cognitive diagnoses to be applied to results from a test of knowledge about fractions of seventh and eighth graders (initial test…

A method is presented for collecting information about the match between students' learning issues in problem-based learning and teachers' objectives. Subjects were 82 second-year medical students at the University of Limburg in Maastricht (Netherlands) in a problem-based curriculum. During a unit on pregnancy, childbirth, and child development,…

At the request of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Texas Austin (UT Austin), the Measurement and Evaluation Center conducted a validity study to assist in revising the department's placement policy for Mathematics 403K (M 403K). The existing decision score on the College Board Achievement Test in Mathematics Level 1 (460) was…

Numerous studies on death anxiety report conflicting findings. Concluding that a lack of specificity may explain the mixed results, this study sought to address the lack of focus and to extend and validate the results of an earlier study. A sample of 152 undergraduate students (111 female) from middle to upper-middle class participated. Subjects…

Some of the issues involved in validating two English second-language listening comprehension tests are examined. The tests were two different levels of a listening summary-cloze measure developed for use in a battery of language proficiency tests in the second and fourth years of university-level study in China. In them, students listen to a talk…

Literacy Volunteers of America (LVA) affiliates were surveyed regarding standardized and informal assessment devices they currently used and their frequency of use and effectiveness. A literature review focused on assessment tools and their limitations. The survey was sent to 39 LVA affiliates in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and…

The Barnum Effect was generated to teach students about the ethics of deception in research and the feelings of subjects who are deceived. The Barnum Effect occurs when individuals are duped into believing invalid results of psychological tests. People are most accepting when given favorable feedback about themselves. They interpret evaluations as…