Questionnaires for measuring patients' feelings or beliefs are commonly used in clinical settings for diagnostic purposes, clinical decision making, or treatment evaluation. Raw scores of a patient can be evaluated by comparing them with norms based on a reference population. Using the Pain Cognition List (PCL-2003) as an example, this article…

Concern has been raised about the lack of participant compliance in diary studies that use paper-and-pencil as opposed to electronic formats. Three studies explored the magnitude of compliance problems and their effects on data quality. Study 1 used random signals to elicit diary reports and found close matches to self-reported completion times,…

This study used kernel-smoothing procedures to estimate the item characteristic functions (ICFs) of a set of continuous personality items. The nonparametric ICFs were compared with the ICFs estimated (a) by the linear model and (b) by Samejima's continuous-response model. The study was based on a conditioned approach and used an error-in-variables…

The article examines theoretical issues associated with measurement in the human sciences and ensuring data from rating scale instruments are measures. An argument is made that using raw scores from rating scale instruments for subsequent arithmetic operations and applying linear statistics is less preferable than using measures. These theoretical…

We present a "practitioner's guide" to social skills assessment and intervention with students attending public schools. Important characteristics of assessment instruments are discussed, including psychometric properties and strategies applicable to school settings. We then review several social skills assessment protocols and rating scales that…

Higher education institutions need to ascertain whether their stakeholders understand the school's mission, vision, and values. In the present study, the psychometric properties of a mission identity and activity measure were investigated with two staff samples. Using a principal component factor analysis (varimax rotation), respondents in Sample…

Relationships between the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (TOSWRF; Mather, Hammill, Allen, & Roberts, 2004), a recently developed measure of fluency, and other operationalizations of reading, including subtests from the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS; 1996), and the Woodcock-Johnson-III Tests of Achievement, (WJ-III; Woodcock,…

The HEXACO Personality Inventory (HEXACO-PI) operationalizes the six factors obtained from lexical studies of personality structure in several languages. In this study, psychometric properties of the HEXACO-PI were assessed using a community adult sample and also using observer reports, thereby extending the previous investigation relying only on…

Psychometric properties of the Parent-Child Relationship Inventory (PCRI) were examined using data collected from adolescents and their parents in the Fullerton Longitudinal Study. Results revealed acceptable internal consistency for most scales and moderate to high 1-year stability for all scales. Both parents' PCRI scores correlated with their…

This study examined whether characteristics of behavioral items reported by parent and child are related to parent-child agreement. Data were collected from 20 judges rating 59 child behaviors on 11 dimensions hypothesized to affect parent-child agreement. Data from 675 parent-child dyads (85% female caregivers, 62% male children, aged 7-17)…

The Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index (RAPI; H. R. White & E. W. Labouvie, 1989) is a frequently used measure of alcohol-related consequences in adolescents and college students, but psychometric evaluations of the RAPI are limited and it has not been validated with college students. This study used item response theory (IRT) to examine the RAPI on…

This study investigated whether 2 different progress monitoring assessments differentially predicted growth in reading skills associated with systematic phonics instruction. Oral reading fluency (ORE) was compared with an intervention aligned word list (IAWL) as predictors of growth in untimed and timed decoding and word identification and text…

This article describes the development of a measure of adult sleep quality: the Adult Sleep-Wake Scale (ADSWS). The ADSWS is a self-report pencil-and-paper measure of sleep quality consisting of five behavioral dimensions (Going to Bed, Falling Asleep, Maintaining Sleep, Reinitiating Sleep, and Returning to Wakefulness). Data were collected from…

The focus of this report is to summarize the research that has been conducted thus far on the new SAT Writing section. The evidence provided reveals that the new writing section has satisfactory psychometric quality in that its reliability is acceptable; it is significantly related to first-year college GPA and college English grades; it has been…

Background: "Volume & Heaviness" was one of three Piagetian tests used in the CSMS survey in 1975/76. However unlike psychometric tests showing the Flynn effect--that is with students showing steady improvements year by year requiring tests to be restandardized--it appeared that the performance of Y7 students has recently been…