Despite favorable psychometric properties, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire for the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (4th ed.) (GAD-Q-IV) does not have a known factor structure, which calls into question use of its original weighted scoring system (usually referred to as the dimensional score).…

The culture of assessment in higher education requires academic librarians to demonstrate the impact of information literacy instruction on student learning. As a result, many librarians seek to gain knowledge about the information literacy assessment approaches available to them. This article identifies three major assessment approaches: (1)…

Teachers distribute their time in many ways. The study sought to determine how agriculture teachers distribute their time among 11 selected teacher activities (i.e., preparation for instruction; classroom/laboratory teaching; laboratory preparation and/or maintenance; grading/scoring students' work; administrative duties-program management;…

This article presents an activity in which students pool their knowledge and creativity to make a song presenting what they have learned in a unit on the rock cycle. This highly motivating, integrated performance assessment incorporates multiple intelligences, reinforces learning, and is a student favorite in the elementary and middle grades.

This chapter discusses the Association of American Colleges and Universities' (AAC&U's) Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) project, which aims to demonstrate that faculty across the country share fundamental expectations about student learning on all of the essential learning outcomes deemed critical for student…

Third Digest addresses several aspects of assigning grades, beginning with a discussion of the variability of test scores, and reviewing the use of standardized scores, ideas on assigning letter grades, and recommendations for grading. An important characteristic of grades as initially recorded, the variability of the scores of each test or…

Twenty-eight protocols of the Stanford-Binet Fourth Edition (SB:IV) obtained from graduate students were examined for scoring and clerical errors that contributed to the inaccuracy of test scores. Scoring of individual items was identified as the most error prone process, as evidenced by the fact that 96% of the protocols contained scoring errors.…

Computer simulations under three conditions of polytomous differential item functioning (DIF) compared the ability of three different statistical procedures to detect nonuniform DIF. The procedures were a nominal and an ordinal extension of the Mantel-Haenszel statistic, and logistic discriminant function analysis. Results showed that only the…

A common procedure for obtaining multiple readings (ratings) for a constructed response item, especially in high-stakes tests, is to have two readers read the papers independently, with a third reading if the results differ by more than one point. This necessitates a scoring rule that specifies how the ratings will be aggregated into a single item…

Multiple-choice tests are generally scored using a conventional number right scoring method. While this method is easy to use, it has several weaknesses. These weaknesses include decreased validity due to guessing and failure to credit partial knowledge. In an attempt to address these weaknesses, psychometricians have developed various scoring…

In this study a Q sort was developed to measure pupil self-image of science achievement in high school. The Q sort was described so that similar tests could be constructed to measure affective behavior for most classroom environments. (Editor/RK)

Sixty-six children aged 9-10 years were tested in two groups with two parallel cloze tests of reading comprehension. The same tests were then given as cloze tests of listening comprehension. (Editor)

A central aim in any assessment program is to ensure fair and stable scoring from administration to administration. When administrations are decentralized, not only in location, but in frequency and in logistical configuration, it is imperative to construct training, certifying, and monitoring systems that provide continuity between the original…