Describes recent evidence that there is a decline in the aptitude and academic achievement of college-bound students and of young people generally. Proposes that education professionals should attempt to remedy this situation by cultivating and developing the unique talents of every student. (MLH)

This study investigates the effect of instructions, anxiety, and locus of control on scores obtained on a group-administered intelligence test. Results suggested that boys were more sensitive than girls to the differential demands of testing instructions. (Author)

A study determined whether chemical operations specialists at skill level 1 differ in terms of aptitude, job knowledge, job confidence, and perceptions of task difficulty, task importance, task frequency, and task training, depending on whether the specialists are active U.S. Army soldiers or are in the Army Reserve. The subjects for whom complete…

Teachers continue to address the question of how to adapt instruction to recognize the existence of different learning styles yet provide quality education for all students. Traditionally, instructional models available to teachers and curriculum planners ranged along a continuum from lockstep to individualization. This definition has led to…

Demand for admission to teacher education programs is tending to outstrip the availability of places. Admissions decisions are currently made on the basis of criteria which have little support in the evidence on the prediction of success in professional practice. This study addresses two aspects of career success: survival and promotion. A sample…

This paper briefly reviews research on tasks in knowledge-rich domains including developmental studies, work in artificial intelligence, studies of expert/novice problem solving, and information processing analysis of aptitude test tasks that have provided increased understanding of the nature of expertise. Particularly evident is the finding that…

A study investigated the relationships among educationally related characteristics and month of service entry for 77,347 Navy recruits who entered the Navy between June 1982 and May 1983. Data were obtained from monthly Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) reports on Navy recruit characteristics and performance on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading…

Variables that correlate with scores on the National Certifying Examination (NCE) for Physician's Assistants (PAs) were investigated. It is noted that NCE scores represent professional entry-level performance for PAs and that identification of variables related to PA performance may promote the development of standardized selection criteria. The…

The purpose of this study was twofold: to investigate to what extent characteristics of anchor tests may affect precision of item calibration, and to estimate to what extent precision of item calibration may be affected by removal of persons whose response patterns deviate from those normally expected from the Rasch one-parameter logistic model.…

Gender differences were found in the performance of 103 school administrators (74 men and 29 women) participating in the University of Tulsa's Management Development Program assessment center's evaluations. Exercises included an in-basket, two interviews, an oral presentation, and two leaderless group discussions. Women scored higher on the…

The relationship of readability, "readable writing" techniques, and comprehension was evaluated in a series of five experiments involving United States Navy recruits. Eight expository passages from a standardized reading test were revised by using word lists to simplify the vocabulary and a restriction in syntactic structure to simplify…

Traditionally, confirmatory factor analytic models are tested against a null model of total independence. Using randomly generated factors in a matrix of 46 aptitude tests, this approach is shown to be unlikely to reject even random factors. An alternative null model, based on a single general factor, is suggested. In addition, an index of model…

The possibilities and problems in the use of within-group slopes of outcomes on inputs as indicators of substantive educational group effects are considered. Slopes are proposed as outcome measures which may reflect within-group processes in between-group analyses of multilevel data. Research on aptitude x treatment interactions, contextual…

Test repetition is a significant phenomenon in standardized admissions testing in terms of the numbers of examinees involved. This study was initiated to determine what additional advice might be offered to test takers contemplating repetition of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) and test users confronted with how to interpret multiple test…