A cross-cultural test measuring need-achievement motivation was developed and administered to 634 American Indian, Spanish American and Anglo high school seniors attending 24 schools, including Federal, public and private boarding and day types. Need-achievement was related to the following types of measures: academic, aptitude, intelligence, and…

The effects of test-item selection on total test reliability and validity were investigated. It was posited that in a reading comprehension test, the knowledge displayed by the examinees is of interest only as it is a valid measure of how much a student learned from reading or comprehending a stimulus paragraph. Selection of items solely on the…

The suitability of the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT) as a valid measure of school achievement for use on a national health survey is discussed. It was found that the Arithmetic and Reading sections of the 1963 Revised Wide Range Achievement Test have reasonably good construct validity as judged by their relation to the Stanford and the…

A tailored testing model employing the beta distribution, whose mean equals the difficulty of an item and whose variance is approximately equal to the sampling variance of the item difficulty, and employing conditional item difficulties, is proposed. The model provides a procedure by which a minimum number of items of a test, consisting of a set…

Likert-type inventories of children's attitude toward the world of work were administered to approximately 1,500 students in grades 2-8. The positively and negatively stated scores were analyzed separately. Agreement with positively stated items showed almost no difference among the various grades. However, the trend toward more disagreement among…

This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the effects of a semi-segregated school system on the IQ's of its students. The basic data consist of IQ scores for fourth, sixth, and eighth grades and associated environmental data obtained from their school records. A statistical model is developed to analyze longitudinal data when both process error…

From some simple and schematic assumptions about information processing, a stochastic differential equation is derived for the motion of a student through a computer-assisted elementary mathematics curriculum. The mathematics strands curriculum of the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences is used to test: (1) the theory and (2)…

A number of criticisms have been made of currently available standardized pre-reading test materials in terms of their appropriateness for administration to urban children, their standardization, their content, and their required testing procedures. This new pre-reading skills battery has been designed as an urban oriented testing instrument to…

Research procedures used in the development and validation of R/EAL (Reading/Everyday Activities in Life), a new test to overcome problems in assessing functional literacy among adolescents and adults, are described. Specific objectives of the study were to: (1) provide information about the design and development of R/EAL, including determination…

The purpose of this study was to determine the validity of the American College Test (ACT) in predicting academic achievement of students from an area which is culturally, economically, and educationally depressed. The population, chosen from 6 community colleges serving the Appalachian region of Kentucky, consisted of 1,127 full time (12 or more…

This investigation was designed to identify scales indicative of the development of problem-solving behavior in young children, and to discover whether children of different backgrounds exhibit similarities in the order of development and levels of achievement of problem-solving behaviors. Items from twenty-two tests were selected for use.…

Differential prediction of grade point average for black and white freshman students was empirically investigated at 13 integrated institutions by comparison of regression planes. Particular attention was given to the possibility that prediction procedures that are appropriate for white (majority) students would under-predict the performance of…

Performance tests are considered significant instruments in facilitating the accurate assessment of an individual's overall competency. The importance of measuring performance and the advantages of using performance tests are discussed. Developing the test involves identifying the objectives to be measured, the task to be performed, and the time…

The development of a Student Rating Form to be used by faculty in systematically describing college students is outlined in this first of a series of reports concerned with faculty characterizations of students. The treatment is primarily historical, providing a basis for subsequent technical reports of analyses of faculty definitions of desirable…

The purpose of this study was to attempt to identify those factors that influence a high school student's success on the Advanced Placement (AP) Examinations by examining and comparing the variables contained in the high school records of former AP participants. A total of 248 high school students participated in the research. The criterion for…