Examined internal structure of a modified version of the Gross Cohesiveness Scale (GCS) to determine factors involved in group cohesiveness as measured by the GCS. Performed Pearson product-moment correlations, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. Found two separate and distinct factors: affective and cognitive, both aspects of social cohesion.…

Reports two investigations of the self-efficacy beliefs of students with and without a physical disability. Used the Social Situations Questionnaire, Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons Scale, and the Self-Efficacy Questionnaire for Social Skills to validate the instruments developed for this investigation, the College Interaction Self-Efficacy…

Compared the reliability and validity of three methods of measuring students' ability to articulate their career values. Cochran's method and idiosyncratic and standardized methods developed in response to problems with the Cochran method. Test-retest reliabilities for the three methods were .33, .66, and .19, respectively. The findings suggest…

Within a framework of general theory governing relations between models for structural analysis, the research activities of General Research On Understanding Psychometrics (GROUP) of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education are discussed. (MT)

The concurrent validity of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) was assessed against the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities in a sample of 39 Mexican-American preschool children from low socioeconomic status background. Results indicated some specific support for the WPPSI's concurrent validity. (Author/BS)

This article presents the viewpoint that care must be taken to fit the specifics of a testing program to its intended purpose. Testing for diagnosing individual student learning and for school evaluation should not be confused. Statewide testing programs may provide evaluative information, but are inadequate sources of diagnostic information. (LMO)

Three major views of intelligence are compared and evaluated: the psychometric, the Piagetian, and the information-processing. The educational implications of each view for training content knowledge and intellectual skills are considered. How each view would approach training students in solving verbal analogies is discussed. (Author/BS)

In response to research questioning the utility of the Jesness Inventory in predicting and differentiating delinquency, this study isolated the personality dimensions of 422 adjudicated, noninstitutionalized adolescents by item level factor analysis. The resulting three factors--Mistrust, Social Pessimism, and Hypersensitivity--were compared with…

Administered the TEMAS (Tell Me a Story) test to 73 public school and 210 clinical Puerto Rican children. Story content was scored for nine personality functions and descriptive indexes. Results indicated internal consistency and interrater reliability. TEMAS indexes significantly discriminated between school and clinical samples. (BH)

Approaches proposed for educational diagnostic assessment are reviewed and identified as deficit assessment and error analysis. The development of diagnostic instruments may require a reexamination of existing psychometric models and development of alternative ones. The psychometric and content demands of diagnostic assessment all but require test…

When the drive to develop and administer tests comes from a public call for accountability in a profession, from the government's response to this call, or from politicians attempting to identify a hot issue, it may be said that the test must first have political validity in order to be implemented. Only after this political validity has been…

This paper presents the results of a development and psychometric evaluation of the Addiction Counselor Evaluation Scale (ACES), an instrument designed for the evaluation and supervision of entry level Alcoholism and Other Drug Abuse (AODA) counselors based on the Technical Assistance Publication Series (TAP) 21. The domains of the competence of…

Current practices for assessment of language in bilingual students frequently involve the use of tests translated from English to the target language or tests designed for, and normed on, monolingual people. This Digest explains why these common approaches are not well suited for a bilingual population and provides guidance regarding more suitable…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) seeks to include all students in the United States in the sampling frame from which students are selected to participate in the assessment. However, some students with disabilities (SWD) are either unable to take NAEP tests under standard testing conditions or are unable to perform at their…

In three lectures, Benjamin D. Wright of the University of Chicago introduces the Rasch model and its basic concepts. The first lecture, March 30, 1994 discusses the model created by Georg Rasch, a Danish mathematician, which Dr. Wright initially saw as merely a way to make raw scores into measures. Eventually, the model developed into a…