This document contains three papers from a symposium on leadership and executive development. "Leading and Managing in a Service Organization: An Examination of Line vs. Staff Effectiveness" (Allan H. Church, Janine Waclawski) presents an analysis of differences in managerial strengths and weaknesses between 45 line managers and 52 human resources…

Alternatives to standard language proficiency testing of bilingual or language minority students are discussed in this educational policy bulletin. The New Mexico strategy is described, which uses multiple assessment techniques to identify students' home language, assess oral English proficiency through standardized testing and teacher…

The primary purposes of this study were to establish the validity of the Gibson and Dembo (1984) teacher efficacy scale (modified for use by resource-room teachers) and to examine the association between resource-room teacher efficacy and the reported frequency and utility of the instructional supervision these teachers received. The 580 Maine…

The Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC) scales have been used both to evaluate program effects and to assign subjects to treatment modalities. This study explored the construct validity of scores from the MHLC scales when the measure is used with adults who solicit intervention to promote their own health. The MHLC measures health…

A method is presented for determining the content validity of a series of secondary school mathematics tests. These tests are part of the Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project (MDTP), a collaborative effort by California university systems to develop placement examinations and a means to document student preparation in mathematics. Content…

Patterns of responses to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) that typify deliberate deception of others (faking good) were studied using 100 undergraduates at the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) who were given extra course credit for participation in the study. Females constituted 73% of the final subject pool. Each…

This brief guide outlines best practices in preschool screening for the presence of possible disabilities. It covers: a definition of screening, its history, the rationale for screening, requirements for effective screening measures (reliability, validity, fairness, utility), models for preschool screening, evaluation of screening procedures, and…

The use of stepwise regression has been criticized for both interpretive misunderstandings and statistical aberrations. A major statistical problem with stepwise regression and other procedures that involve multiple significance tests is the inflation of the Type I error rate. General approaches to control the family-wise error rate such as the…

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one of the most frequently used measures of personality. MBTI Form G and a self-descriptive adjectival checklist, the "Personal Preferences Self-Description Questionnaire" (PPSDQ), were administered to 191 college students. The four dimensions of personality measured by the MBTI are:…

The two studies reported examined the validity of several Evaluation/Survey Service (ESS) surveys for accurately reflecting changes in students' perceptions resulting from changes made by an institution in its policies, programs, services, or environment. In study 1, personnel from nine postsecondary institutions identified items on various ESS…

A crucial, but often forgotten, role of educational assessment is to enhance students' learning. This author advocates that an assessment program designed for student learning differs from assessment for accountability in purpose, test format, measurement type, number, and spread of tests, use of test results, and amount of interval between…

Studies comparing neuromotor and mental functioning of normal and disabled populations have shown that lower cognitive functioning is significantly related to lower motor functioning for retarded or disabled children but not for normal children. In an effort to further examine the relationship between these two functions, a study was conducted of…

This book is an updated account of the present use and status of performance indicators in British higher education set against the developing literature and experience of performance indicators in the United States and other countries and in view of the major shifts in higher education policy occurring in recent years. Chapter One explores key…

Expert systems can be used to aid decisionmaking. A computerized adaptive test is one kind of expert system, although not commonly recognized as such. A new approach, termed EXSPRT, was devised that combines expert systems reasoning and sequential probability ratio test stopping rules. Two versions of EXSPRT were developed, one with random…

This paper examines the effect of student perceptions of the learning environment on their satisfaction with that environment. Teacher education students (N=130) completed the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI) prior to and at the end of a semester unit in educational psychology. The CUCEI consists of seven scales:…