Comparisons with appraisals by supervisors, peers, and subordinates suggest that self-appraisals show more leniency, less variability, and less discriminant validity. Self-appraisals show less halo. Self-appraisals significantly correlate with other sources in some studies and fail to correlate in many others. (Author)

Raven's Progressive Matrices test items were analyzed for M demand (Pascual-Leone's developmental construct). Data on second- and third-grade subjects were analyzed for extent of absolute agreement of Raven and Figural Intersection Test (FIT) scores. Raw scores on the Raven could be deduced on the basis of FIT performance. (Author/RD)

Presents an approach for studying measurement characteristics of instruments designed for comparative studies of educational achievement. It presents a reanalysis of data from 22 countries and 73,818 9- and 10-year-old students from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement study. (Author/SLD)

Conducted life story interviews with and administered psychometric inventories to 50 individuals who had lived with spinal cord injury for more than 22 years. Transcripts of the life story interviews were then categorized into one of four classic forms: comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony. A sample of each narrative category is provided. (RJM)

This article examines psychometric analysis regarding the viability and limits of IQ testing in the context of "The Bell Curve." It discusses eyeball analysis versus item analysis, mean differences, validity coefficients, general intelligence, and IQ and gifted education, and urges a search for intrapersonal and environmental catalysts…

Describes the development and characteristics of the Parent-Caregiver Relationship Scale, which shows promise as a measure of parents' and caregivers' perceptions of one another and of their relationship for studies of infants, parents, and caregivers in the context of full-time child care. The scale includes measures of trust/confidence, open…

The usefulness of the confirmatory factor analysis model of D. Sorbom (1974) to estimate invariant difficulty and discrimination item parameters on a personality scale was supported in a study using responses of 834 undergraduates to the Social Worry Scale of the Anxious Thoughts Inventory (A. Wells, 1994). (SLD)

Examined attachment relationships of toddlers at 26 months to their child caregivers. Developed a scale describing safe haven and secure base functions of attachment relationships in child care. Found that this Safe and Secure Scale related to proximal indicators of child-care quality, and was a stronger measure than the child-caregiver Q-security…

The psychometric characteristics of the Henderson Environmental Learning Process Scale (HELPS) were studied with 385 parents of school-aged children. Factor analysis provided a conceptually meaningful six-factor solution, but internal consistency reliabilities of scores on three factors were unacceptably low. With some modifications, the HELPS…

Folkman and Lazarus's theory of stress and coping was used to develop a measure assessing the perceived stress within a bicultural context. Middle school students of Mexican descent (N=881) reported their perceived stress from intergenerational acculturation gaps, within-group discrimination, out-group discrimination, and monolingual stress.…

Investigates the psychometric properties of a Spanish and English version of the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS) when employed with Spanish- and English-speaking teachers and students. The independent emergence of comparable Spanish and English PIPPS factor structures provides initial support for use of this measure in research with…

Developed and tested the psychometric properties of the 38-item Self Description Questionnaire for Preschoolers. Found that the scale was reliable for young children, first-order and higher order confirmatory factor analysis models fit the data, and factor correlations were mostly moderate. Achievement test scores correlated moderately with…

Describes Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP), new measure designed to identify the types of interpersonal problems that people experience and the level of distress associated with them before, during, and after psychotherapy. Presents psychometric data from two studies which demonstrated high internal consistency of IIP, high test-retest…

A group of covariance structure models was examined to ascertain the similarity between conventionally administered and computerized adaptive versions of the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT). Results for 332 students indicate that the computerized version of the DAT is an adequate representation of the conventional test battery. (TJH)

Three studies explored the effects of grouping versus randomized items in questionnaires on internal consistency and test-retest reliability with samples of 80, 80, and 100, respectively, university students and undergraduates. The 2 correlational and 1 experimental studies were reasonably consistent in demonstrating that neither format was…