Intended for use by early childhood practitioners who select and use early childhood assessment instruments, this guide provides information needed to judge instrument appropriateness and technical quality. The guide focuses mainly on standardized, broadly available instruments. Criteria for selecting instruments include publication after 1979,…

In an assessment of the adequacy of the Gesell screening examination as a test instrument, a Gesell Screening Evaluation was given to 400 children semi-annually from their 4th to 6th year. The sample, which was stratified by parent occupation, included 40 girls and 40 boys at 5 age levels. The test battery corresponded with the Gesell Preschool…

The purpose of this paper is to compare the utility of the information yielded by the classical and latent trait psychometric models when they are used to examine the psychometric qualities of an instrument designed to assess school-related stress. The instrument, known as the School Situation Survey (SSS), is described, and efforts to determine…

Prompted by the increased use of behavior rating instruments in educational environments and evidence of confusion over the interpretation of labels designating behavior clusters, the present two-phase study analyzed 410 specific items contained in seven behavior rating instruments and investigated whether these items could be intuitively sorted…

In an effort to improve the reliability of the Noncognitive Questionnaire (NCQ), the instrument was revised and the revision's reliability and validity were examined examined with black and white college freshmen. The NCQ measures eight non-traditional or non-cognitive variables that relate to minority student retention. The revised NCQ is…

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) measures variations in normal personality. The validity of the measure has only recently been examined by analyses of the structure underlying MBTI responses; and these investigations have used exploratory factor analyses, rather than confirmatory factor analytic methods. A confirmatory factor analysis was…

A current trend in testing is to use pictorial methods of assessing various traits. The original American edition of the Geist Picture Interest Inventory consisted of 129 pictures of vocations and three of hobbies. The inventory has been adapted for use in various countries and cultures in which the pictures are changed to suit the cultures of the…

The use of confirmatory factor analytic procedures to examine the dimensionality of writing skills as measured by a large-scale direct writing test was illustrated. Internal construct validity evidence about the nature of writing skills measured by the test was provided. Data used were scores assigned by about 100 trained professional raters on a…

This package consists of an information booklet for job candidates preparing to take California's Probation Officer Examination and a user's manual intended for those who will administer the examination. The candidate information booklet provides background information about the development and validation of the Probation Officer Examination,…

In 1986, a study was conducted by the Rancho Santiago Community College District (RSCCD) to evaluate the relationship between reading placement scores and classroom performance. The study sample consisted of students from fall 1985, spring 1986, and fall 1986 who had been tested using the College Board Assessment and Placement Test upon…

Six basic questions that are important to consider in foreign language testing are often taken for granted: (1) What is it that a student "knows" when he or she has acquired a foreign language, and is it measured in qualitative or quantitative terms or both? (2) What are the roles of skills and attitudes in learning a foreign language?…

This report describes the second phase in the development of the University of Washington Teacher Assessment System designed to produce a new system for the evaluation of student teachers. The development of the new system took place in several phases. Phase one, a literature search as a data source for the development of a teacher assessment…

This paper addresses the issue of whether four of the learning styles instruments currently available are of sufficient psychometric quality to warrant their continued use either for research or educational purposes. Four instruments, which purport to measure learning styles, were selected for review. Criteria for selection were based in part on…

Six university English departments collaborated in this examination of the differences between multiple-choice and essay tests in evaluating writing skills. The study also investigated ways the two tools can complement one another, ways to improve cost effectiveness of essay testing, and ways to integrate assessment and the educational process.…

Methodological and conceptual issues arising from a study of student perceptions of secondary school class climate are discussed. Through a pilot study, 113 Likert-type items were collected, consisting of teacher-focused dimensions, classroom-focused dimensions, and instructional practices. Factor and cluster analyses were used at the item level.…