The effects of recent changes on the Scholastic Assessment Tests (SAT) on mathematics performance are being studied using data from 1993 and later. Early results show a relative gain for women in the verbal area but not in mathematics. Expected trends, including an effect from increased calculator use, are discussed. (SLD)

Three experiments explored preschoolers' developing knowledge of stable (identity, gender, and race), changeable (mood, weight, and health), and changeable-but-irreversible (age and height) characteristics when knowledge of those characteristics was tested verbally rather than pictorially. Found that children make systematic rather than random…

A meta-analytic review was conducted on published studies examining the relationship between performance on the quantitative and verbal components of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and graduate grade point average. Results suggest that the quantitative and verbal components of the GRE possess minimal predictive validity. (SLD)

College students whose judgments of others were more gender stereotyped recalled more traditional pictures portraying men in masculine activities and were more likely to cluster recalled items in gender categories than students with less stereotyped judgments. Results with 100 males and 74 females support J. T. Spence's gender identity theory.…

Students (N = 730) took the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (current forms G or H) during orientation to medical school. Stepwise regression analyses showed the Nelson-Denny Reading Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Rate were significant predictors of MCAT (taken prior to admission to medical school) verbal reasoning. Reading Vocabulary was a significant…

Based on initial Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) Verbal pretest data and hypotheses advanced in the research literature, 7 sentence completion and 16 analogy items with extreme levels of differential item functioning (DIF) were selected and then systematically revised and re-administered in an attempt to reduce or eliminate DIF. The apparent…

A multiple choice test item is identified as flawed if it has no single best answer. In spite of extensive quality control procedures, the administration of flawed items to test-takers is inevitable. Common strategies for dealing with flawed items in conventional testing, grounded in the principle of fairness to test-takers, are reexamined in the…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether it is both possible and cost-effective to revise middle-difficulty Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) discrete items in order to produce items of higher or lower difficulty. The basic procedure was to select items of a given difficulty and, by revising the distractors, make them easier or more…

As part of a large-scale project to remodel the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), this study examined the predictive validity of a prototype revised SAT, which incorporated many of the important structural changes planned for the test. This prototype was compared to a form of the current SAT with regard to several validity-related issues. Nineteen…

The accuracy of procedures that are used to compare the performance of different groups of examinees on test items obviously depends on the correct classification of members in each examinee group. The significance of this dependence is determined by the sensitivity of the statistical procedure and the proportion of examinees who are unidentified.…

The first of two studies reported examined the factors that predict differences in item responses for black and white matched examinees to analogies on the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE). Data were taken from 13 forms of the GRE Verbal Test, with a median sample size of 21,000 whites and a median sample size of 1,400 blacks for the purpose of…

Two studies investigated factors affecting the scores of Hawaii students taking the verbal subtest of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). For the past several years, the mean verbal scores of Hawaii students have consistently been among the lowest 10% of all states. The first study addressed the identification of items and types of items that have…

The relationship between students' scores on a verbal meaning test and their degrees of confidence in item responses was investigated. Subjects were black undergraduate students and they were administered a verbal meaning test by following a confidence testing procedure. (Author/BJG)

The purpose of this resarch was to develop a model of verbal information processing for use in subsequent analyses of the construct and predictive validity of the current Department of Defense military selection and classification battery, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) 8/9/10. The theory and research methods of selected…

The work of E. P. Torrance concerning creative thinking abilities, creative learning and teaching, the creative learning environment, and the measurement of creative thinking is discussed. Torrance began his pioneering research on the nature of creative thinking in 1958 with pilot testing of his first batteries designed to assess creative thinking…