It is highly probable that some applicants for apprenticeships are unfairly excluded from consideration because of the less than accurate information provided by some psychological tests. (Author)

From the moral development scale scoring manual, Kohlberg's published works, and the research of his collaborators and others, an analysis was made of the evidence supporting the hierarchy of moral reasoning and the claims put forth for the cross-cultural universality of the cognitive-developmental theory. (Author/CS)

A review of developments on both a national and state-by-state basis pertaining to: women and poverty, research on women, paid housewifery, politics, personalities, biased textbooks, bias in tests, new health policies, women Rhodes scholars, sexism in colleges, etc. (JM)

Described is the development of an ethnologically unbiased test for proper classification of Mexican-American elementary students. It is explained that of the 14 subtests drawn from standardized and nonstandardized tests and administered to 122 Anglo and Mexican American children (7-9 years old), only five were found to be insignificantly…

The detrimental effects of anxiety in English as a second language/foreign language (ESL/FL) are investigated. Although empirical research on the subject of ESL/FL test affect is limited, helpful insights on test anxiety exist in the psychological literature. Two constructs in the anxiety literature are considered relevant for this study: trait…

In response to criticisms of the sex bias/fairness of career inventories, new guidelines, modifications to existing inventories, and new inventories have been developed. The occupational card sort, Occu-Sort (O-S), was administered to junior and senior high school students from suburban and urban communities to assess its effectiveness in…

Item bias, when present in a multiple-choice test, can be detected by appropriate analyses of the persons x items scoring matrix. Five related schemes for the statistical analysis of bias were applied to a widely used, primary skills multiple-choice test which was administered in either its English- or Spanish-language version at each of the two…

Arguments against competency testing surface continually, and classic counter-arguments reoccur. Nevertheless, minimum competency testing and other accountability efforts have much public support. Those claiming that the tests are not relevant or do not have predictive validity, also say they are coachable and biased. Answers are given to these…

The results from the Oral Reading Test developed for the Early Childhood Education Program evaluation provided the opportunity to study some of the factors that might influence student's test-taking behavior. The Oral Reading Test requires individual students to demonstrate reading skills by reading aloud sentences typical of various grade level…

To develop an approach for a nondiscriminatory identification model for gifted students in Rome (GA) City Schools, mean IQ scores on the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability test were compared for fourth, fifth, and tenth grade students divided into four groups: White advantaged, White disadvantaged, Black advantaged, and Black disadvantaged. A significant…

This report stems from the misunderstanding of what general standardized tests and standardized admission tests can and were designed to do, and an uneasiness with certain discoveries concerning biases in the tests. Important issues such as margin of error, predictive value, social and racial bias, and the effects of coaching are the very issues…

The monograph presents a model for identifying gifted/talented children which is based on a multidimensional concept of intelligence, designed to include the less accepted school population in its initial search, and tied to a staff development program for teachers who must be part of the screening process. Rationale for the Multi-Dimensional…

Issues related to a national assessment of speaking and listening skills include the specification of the domain of communication competencies, the selection of measurement strategies, and the elimination of racial and ethnic bias. A project committee proposed that the domain of national assessment spans three dimensions: function (informing,…

Fairness or unfairness may be an attribute of a test per se, or of its use, or of its statistical treatment. An hypothetical situation designed to be intrinsically fair and unbiased is used to show that analysis of covariance as a statistical method may introduce bias to the treatment of test scores. In contrast, equipercentile equating methods…

The consistency across time and readers of the scoring of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) open-ended exercises was examined. The procedure studied is a nominal categorical scoring. Ten readers independently read 28 sample responses to each of 12 open-ended exercises at three different times. All ten readers agreed on their…