A description is presented of the construction and use of a questionnaire for evaluating freshman science courses. It uses a forced choice technique to measure student expectations, influence on students, and faculty objectives. Field tests are used to estimate the procedure's validity and reliability. (Author/MSE)

Default on guaranteed student loans has been increasing. The use of discriminant analysis as a technique to identify "good" v "bad" student loans based on information available from the loan application is discussed. Research to test the ability of models to such predictions is reported. (Author/MLW)

Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory items which differentiated between males and females by more than nine percentage points were removed in an attempt to develop a unisex occupational scale for pharmacists. The remaining items formed a unisex scale nearly as reliable and valid as the original, over short term periods. (MH)

Employing two complementary data sets--the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of l972, and the Study of Academic Prediction and Growth, we question the conventional interpretation of educational plans as motives and thereby as determinants of educational attainment. (Author/GDC)

Paracognitive evaluation of medical training recognizes the linkage between training and specific maturational trends. After administering the Paracognitive Evaluation Form to assess medical students' performance in seminars and clinical teaching situations, hierarchical cluster analysis suggested that maturational trends were measured and that…

Eight ambiguous items in the 16-item Inconditionality of Regard Scale of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory were rewritten to see if the relationship of that scale to others in the inventory would change. The hypothesis that the relationships would change was upheld. (The eight original and eight modified items are included). (JKS)

The problem associated with validating an admissions test when such validation is based solely on the scores of the accepted, and therefore, restricted, group of applicants is demonstrated. A correction formula that estimates the correlation between admission test scores and a subsequent measure of performance for the entire group of applicants is…

Two measures of community-based social behavior for adolescents and young adults with emotional and behavioral disorders, the male and female forms of the Test of Community-Based Social Skill Knowledge and the Scale of Community-Based Social Skill Performance, were examined. Results found the measures yielded acceptable reliabilities and exhibited…

Critiques William Mehrens' 1992 article on performance assessment, claiming that Mehrens professes to favor performance assessment but only as an afterthought to traditional assessment, and Mehrens' view of traditional assessment limits his portrayal of performance assessment. The paper encourages the research community to support performance…

This study investigated the validity of using facilitated communication with individuals with autism (n=6) or profound cognitive impairments (n=6) on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) when facilitators were screened from visual and auditory stimuli. Results do not validate the use of facilitated communication with the PPVT-R or…

Examined the validity of the pragmatic approach to test difficulty put forward by Child (1987). This study investigated whether the Child discourse-type hierarchy predicts text difficulty for second-language readers. Results suggested that this hierarchy may provide a sound basis for developing foreign-language tests when it is applied by trained…

Results of an investigation involving 302 Nepalese undergraduates supported the cross-cultural validity of the Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI) and provided evidence of a meaningful learning process underlying ASI responses. Self-esteem correlated significantly with a more versatile approach to learning. (SLD)

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) was administered to 175 Navajo children at 2 reservation elementary schools. Local normative information was developed to reduce test bias associated with the English-laden content in the test. A procedure was developed for converting WISC-III scores, enabling comparison of…

The agreement between the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI- R) and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) was investigated in the diagnostic assessment of 54 children (ages 22-114 months) referred for possible autism. The observed agreement between the two systems was 66.7%. The CARS identified more cases of autism than the ADI-R.…

Investigated empirical studies in clinical supervision published from 1981 through 1993 to assess scientific rigor and test whether the quality of methodology had improved since the review by Russell, Crimmings, and Lent (1984). Data revealed a shift to realistic field studies, unchecked Type I and Type II error rates, medium effect sizes, and…