The Supervisory Working Alliance Inventory (SWAI) developed by J. F. Efstation, M. J. Patton, and C. M. Kardash (1990) was further evaluated for its psychometric properties and relationships with the Personal Reactions Scale--Revised (PRS-R) developed by E. L. Holloway and B. E. Wampold (1984), the only other measure of the relationship in…

One difficulty in studying the long-term impact of divorce on children has been the lack of a reliable and valid measure of parental conflict for divorced parents. Items for a post-divorce conflict scale were written and tested using 32 male and 63 female college students from divorced families for Study 1 and 60 male and 75 female students from…

This paper offers reasons for using traditional quantitative research methods and illustrates some of the considerations demanding rigor in a study on gender discrimination in school-administrator salaries. Traditional quantitative methods provide a meaningful language based on numbers and objectivity, and they are less time-consuming and complex…

This study analyzed English language tests administered in Brazil as part of a university entrance examination, focusing on the authenticity of its tests of second language reading comprehension, the concept of reading as an interactive process between reader and text, a proficiency-based view of language instruction, and the psychometric…

A previous research report described a prototype measure of the skill of negotiation in interpersonal competency and the results of an initial validation study of that measure. This report describes the results of two further validation studies of the computer simulation negotiation skill measure. In study 1, 37 second- and third-year law students…

This manual describes professional practices in intervention and treatment of sexual abuse and discusses how to address the problems of sexually abused children and their families. It makes an assumption that the reader has basic information about sexual abuse. The discussion focuses primarily on the child's guardian as the abuser. The manual…

Pronunciation is an important subskill in second language learning, therefore worth evaluating. Its quality is commonly assessed in a global, impressionistic way by having learners read aloud. While this allows comparison of examinees' skills, ability to read aloud is a possible confounding variable. An alternative method is to have learners read…

This paper describes the development and validation of the Perception of Parents Scale (POPS), which was designed to measure the transformation in parent-child relations from the initial positions of authority and obedience to the mature position of mutual reciprocity. A 51-item, 4-point Likert scale was designed. Items were divided into three…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development/reliability/validity of a teacher instrument to assess the organizational coupling structure (OCS) of schools. A secondary purpose is to describe the implications of this work for understanding school coupling structure as a complex, "paradoxical" measurement and theoretical…

This ERIC Digest was adapted from the Association for Childhood Education International's (ACEI) 1991 position paper on standardized testing. Since the publication of "A Nation at Risk" in 1983, standardized testing programs have expanded greatly. Tests may be of pencil-and-paper or performance-oriented varieties. The purposes of tests…

Biographical inventory is a selection device used as an alternative or supplement to cognitive testing because this measurement method predicts aspects of job performance that are not predicted by cognitive measures. Some of the issues and concerns about using biographical inventories are discussed. The use of biographical inventories (biodata) is…

Earlier content analyses showed that the match between content covered by textbooks and tests varied as a function of the particular textbook and test a teacher was asked to use. This study tried to determine if the congruity in textbook-test content varied as a function of different styles of textbook use. Using year-long case studies of seven…

A study explored the use of an interactive analysis system, the Reciprocal Category System (RCS), for recording and analyzing observations of individuals tutoring in reading. The supervision of teaching requires observation, and the RCS can provide detailed, objective, and quantifiable records of behavior categories that occur in teacher-learner…

The investigation examined relationships among scales for observing and rating teacher performance. Beginning teachers with varying levels of professional experience (2, 9, and 16 months) were rated by pairs of observers on two occasions. Intercorrelations across occasions fell between .5 and .8. Interrater agreement ranged between .5 and .9.…

Education is a service with multiplicity of student interactions over time and across multiple touch points. Quality teaching needs to be supplemented by consistent quality supporting services for programs to succeed under the competitive distance learning landscape. ServQual and e-SQ scales have been proposed for measuring quality of traditional…