A new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) program, Compliance 2000, assists taxpayers wanting to comply with tax laws but finding it difficult because of legal complexity or administrative burden. Kent State University (Ohio) has used the program to resolve a compliance problem with nonresident alien students and scholars. IRS contact information is…

An approach is presented to the definition of minimal competence for judges to use in standard setting. Panelists in standard setting must receive training to ensure that differences in rating result from differences in perceptions of item difficulty, not in differences of opinion about the definition of minimal competence. (SLD)

Discussion of learner control in computer-assisted instructional simulations focuses on an experiment conducted with undergraduate students that compared three different treatments for instructional control in an aircraft simulator. Topics addressed include performance on immediate and delayed posttests; practice; student attitudes; effects of…

Studied the ability of logical test design (LTD) to predict student performance in reading Roman numerals for 211 sixth graders in Mexico City tested on Roman numeral items varying on LTD-related and non-LTD-related variables. The LTD-related variable item iterativity was found to be the best predictor of item difficulty. (SLD)

An analysis of aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) for preferences for course structure and of instructor orientation preferences was undertaken for 50 first-year college students. Results indicate that students are more satisfied with instructors who are perceived as student oriented but that students who prefer low-difficulty instruction…

This paper describes the use of the Rasch model to help implement computerized administration of the standard and advanced forms of Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM), to compare relative item difficulties, and to convert scores between the standard and advanced forms. The sample consisted of 95 girls and 95 boys in Australia. (SLD)

Describes the Rasch calibration of a portion of the Watkins Farnum Performance Scale (J. Watkins and S. Farnum, 1954), a test of instructional music performance, for 218 sixth graders. Results show how Rasch scaling allows item difficulties to be estimated, the test to be administered more efficiently, and diagnostic information to be obtained.…

This study compared spoken and written narratives of school-age children (N=20) with language learning disabilities (LLD) with chronological age (CA) and language-age (LA) peers. For the spoken summary, productivity measures and grammatical complexity were significantly lower for children with LLD than for CA children. Expository writing was…

Contents of 800 elementary, middle, and high school textbooks published from 1919 to 1991 were analyzed with regard to their levels of difficulty. Following World War II, there was a major decline in schoolbook difficulty which may have led to the subsequent decline in SAT-verbal scores. (MAK)

In this article, one school district shares its experiences with computer-based testing and the immediate access to data it can provide. The Barren County School District in Glasgow, Kentucky, has partnered with the Northwest Evaluation Association to use their computer-based Measure of Academic Progress (MAP). The MAP testing platform is…

Simple arithmetic word problems are often featured in elementary school education. One type of problem, "compare with unknown reference set," ranks among the most difficult to solve. Differences in item difficulty for compare problems with unknown reference set are observed depending on the direction of the relational statement (more than vs. less…

The use of online discussion boards has grown extensively in the past 5 years, yet some researchers argue that our understanding of how to use this tool in an effective and meaningful way is minimal at best. Part of the problem in acquiring more cohesive and useful information rests in the absence of a comprehensive, theory-driven metric to assess…

On-line comprehension studies of flexible word-order languages find that noncanonical ("scrambled") structures induce more difficulty than canonical structures [e.g., Hyona & Hujanen, "Q. J. Exp. Psychol." 50A (1997) 841-858], with this difference being attributed to the structural complexity/infrequency of these forms. However, by presenting…

This article describes the difficulty of teaching about the construction of regions in regional geography courses, which are themselves built on a metageography that often goes unquestioned. The author advocates the use of popular culture to make this very complex issue palpable for undergraduates. Thus, the construction of Eastern Europe within a…

This study investigates the relationship between selected predictors of achievement in playing unrehearsed music (sight reading) and the changing complexity of sight reading tasks. The question under investigation is, how different variables gain or lose significance as sight reading stimuli become more difficult. Fifty-two piano major graduates…