What are the factors that made college studies easier or more difficult for students with and without disabilities? What are the obstacles and what are the facilitators? These are the questions we investigated in a sample of 74 students with disabilities (excluding students who only reported having a learning disability) and to 154 students…

This document consists of papers published in the electronic journal "Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation" during 2000-2001: (1) "Advantages of Hierarchical Linear Modeling" (Jason W. Osborne); (2) "Prediction in Multiple Regression" (Jason W. Osborne); (3) Scoring Rubrics: What, When, and How?"…

The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to examine students' behaviors in physical education classes that might have an impact on classroom management and student learning. The study was conducted in multiple phases, including instrument development, preliminary study, content validity study, and a reliability and validity study.…

The Social Integration Scale (SIS) is intended to facilitate empirical research on the applicability of control theory to many types of adult crime, including "street crime," white collar crime, and physical assaults on spouses. There are five subscales: (1) belief (belief in law and social control); (2) commitment (psychological…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) measured mathematics and science achievement of middle school students in more than 40 countries. About one quarter of the tests' nearly 300 items were free response items requiring students to generate their own answers. Scoring these responses used a two-digit diagnostic code rubric…

A survey of 83 nursing and midwifery education institutions in Britain collected information regarding assessment of prior learning (APL), i.e., certificated learning, and assessment of prior experiential learning (APEL), i.e., noncertificated learning. Follow-up interviews took place in 10 institutions. All nursing and midwifery education…

The objective of this study was to inquire if tunneling of mind, motivation to novelties, and creative mindies in 4 age groups (13, 14, 15, and 16, years of age) have dynamic relationships. A creative mindy is a new organized mind shape not previously occurring. The subjects were 93 pupils of a secondary comprehensive school. Questionnaires were…

The objective of this study was to find variables that are related to creativity and customary productivity dynamically. The subjects were 86 pupils of a secondary comprehensive school differentiated into age groups of 13, 14, 15, and 16 in southern Finland. Three tests and a matrix questionnaire were constructed for the variables. The data were…

The objective of the study was to explore how social mindies or the process social units of mind, social interaction, and private and public behavior are related in the time interval between 13 and 16 years of age. A "mindy" is a unit process of mind constructed through using a mental shape as a sketch for mindy processing. A social…

This guide to different/alternative assessment was prepared for participants in the Rural School and Community Trust, formerly the Annenberg Rural Challenge. Given that Rural Trust participants focus on local place-based education and the relationship between rural schools and their communities, they are not, by and large, enamored of the…

This pamphlet explains a child's Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) "Student Report for Parents/Guardians." In spring 1999, more than 210,000 students from grades 4, 8, and 10 in Massachusetts took the state's MCAS tests. All public students in grades 4, 8, and 10 are required to participate, and the Education Reform…

To test possible cultural differences in strength of individualistic motivation and explore reliability of different individualism measures, two individualism measures were administered to 476 Anglo American, 156 Mexican American, and 101 Black children, aged six to 12. Results indicated age but not cultural differences in strength of…

Three oral testing methods (imitation, completion, and interview) were compared for reliability and validity with 143 adult Egyptian learners of English. Five components (raw score, fluency, pronunciation, grammar, and combined fluency-pronunciation-grammar) were analyzed for each method. Imitation showed the highest validity, with interview and…

This study examined the reliability and stability of teacher behavior scores as measured by the Spaulding Teacher Activity Recording Schedule (STARS). Data were gathered on a student teacher at work in a campus laboratory setting and in a primary ungraded classroom. The student teacher demonstrated a stable teaching style in four of the five…

This research attempted to interrelate several methods of producing option weights (i.e., Guttman internal and external weights and judges' weights) and examined their effects on reliability and on concurrent, predictive, and face validity. It was concluded that option weighting offered limited, if any, improvement over unit weighting. (Author/CTM)