Five of the common misuses of tests are reviewed: (1) acceptance of the test title as an accurate and complete description of the variable being measured (failure to examine the manual and the items carefully to know the specific aspects to be tested can result in misuse through selection of an inappropriate test for a particular purpose or…

This study examines the accuracy of the self-scoring efforts of 306 eighth-graders on the Kuder General Interest Survey (GIS), and suggests possible methods to improve self-scoring accuracy. The GIS is widely used to assist junior high school students with their educational and vocational planning. After the administration of the test by English…

In recent years educators have been utilizing judgmental methods, such as the ones advocated by Ebel and Angoff, to set minimum competency standards on test items. This study was designed to investigate the reliability and validity of these two procedures in setting minimum levels of performance on 175 vocational evaluator competency statements.…

Setting standards for the purpose of certification is frequently performed using judgmental techniques such as the Angoff method. This study was performed to identify types of items that judges find hard to rate accurately, that is, types of items on which examinees perform differently than predicted by the judges. Once identified these item types…

The Miller Assessment for Preschoolers (MAP) is a new developmental screening tool for children aged 2 years 9 months to 5 years 8 months. The instrument, which has been standardized on 1,200 subjects representing nine geographic regions, identifies children who are functioning below the developmental level of their peers. The sampling method was…

Rescoring of Center for Occupational and Professional Assessment objective-referenced tests is decided largely by content experts selected by client organizations. A few of the test items, statistically flagged for review, are not rescored. Some of this incongruence could be due to the use of the biserial correlation (r-biserial) as an…

A probabilistic approach is introduced to classify and diagnose erroneous rules of operation resulting from a variety of misconceptions ("bugs") in a procedural domain of arithmetic. The model is contrasted with the deterministic approach which has commonly been used in the field of artificial intelligence, and the advantage of treating the…

This newsletter contains 32 abstracts of approximately 1000 words each of papers presented at the 1988 conference of the National Testing Network in Writing. Abstracts, listed with their authors, include "Instructional Directions from Large Scale K-12 Writing Assessments" (C. Chew); "Portfolio Assessment across the Curriculum: Early Conflicts" (C.…

This handbook on Classroom Applications of Writing Assessment represents the fourth and final entry in a series of interrelated publications on the assessment of writing proficiency prepared over the past year by the Clearinghouse for Applied Performance Testing (CAPT). This handbook was written to meet the needs of the classroom teacher who is…

Explored are two theoretical approaches that attempt to cope with omitted responses, that is, when an examinee omits (fails to respond to) an item and therefore the item response formula cannot be used. Preliminary considerations are discussed, and it is shown that a conveniently simple application of equivalent items leads to internal…

As early as 1932, Piaget posited four phases of development in moral judgments: amorality, egocentric morality, morality of constraint, and morality of cooperation. In the morality of cooperation, reciprocity (i.e., social reversibility) develops first on a concrete level and then on the level of abstract reciprocity or generalized exchange. In…

Presents a systematic method of converting raw exam scores of performance into letter grades. The method combines the best techniques of normative, statistical, and criterion-referenced systems and, if used by the entire faculty, guarantees consistent and uniform marking procedures. (Author/DN)