Designed for parents of kindergarten and elementary school children in Austin, Texas, this brochure explains the structure and function of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. A question and answer format is used to provide information on the scope and purposes of the tests, grade level differences in testing, meaning and accuracy of the scores, and…

The development of a modified semantic differential measure of school-related attitudes of grades 3-6 children is described and its validation involving 99 children is reported. Each of the four scales of this measure, Attitude Toward-School, -Language Arts, -Teachers, and -Arithmetic, was found to be unidimensional. Internal consistency estimates…

The first aim of this study was to determine undergraduate students' attitudes on the use of computers in education. A questionnaire as survey was administered to 156 undergraduate students in two departments--the Department of Educational Sciences, and the Computer and Educational Technologies--at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University during the fall…

Introduction: This review shows that Web information seeking research suffers from inconsistencies in method and a lack of homogeneity in research foci. Background: Qualitative and quantitative methods are needed to produce a comprehensive view of information seeking. Studies also recommend observation as one of the most fundamental ways of…

The measurement precision, efficiency, and validity of an adaptive test and four conventional listening tests designed to assess musical ability were compared. The conventional tests were the Seashore Tonal Memory Test and three tests (peaked, rectangular, and maximum discrimination) constructed from items in the 278-item adaptive test pool. The…

Development and initial validation are described for an instrument to assess the behavioral coping skills of adolescents. The Assessment of Behavioral Coping Skills (ABCS) was designed for use in the South Carolina Coping Skills Project, a school-based coping skills prevention program for adolescents at high risk for substance abuse. The ABCS…

The study compared two promising item response theory (IRT) item-selection methods, optimal and content-optimal, with two non-IRT item selection methods, random and classical, for use in fixed-length certification exams. The four methods were used to construct 20-item exams from a pool of approximately 250 items taken from a 1985 certification…

This paper is the final report of a multi-year project sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in 1987 through 1990. The main objectives of the research summarized were to: investigate the non-parametric approach to the estimation of the operating characteristics of discrete item responses; revise and strengthen the package computer…

In Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian (BI) is the designated national and official language. However, deficiencies in Indonesian proficiency are found in a wide range of individuals. A test battery to measure proficiency level was developed, consisting of a writing test, a grammar test, and a cloze test. The writing test was an essay, in which five…

This report contains accounts of the scale construction, reliability, and validity of an instrument used to collect parent survey data in a study of Catholic inner-city high schools. The survey was designed to ascertain parents' involvement in their children's schooling based on parental knowledge, reasons for school choice, expectations and…

The validity of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) was examined for foreign students enrolled in U.S. graduate schools. Subjects included 1,353 foreign students for whom English was a second language (ESL) and 42 foreign students whose native language was English. The relationships between college departments' scores on the GRE General Test…

Two studies sought to identify variables that might predict relative success in student teaching performance. University supervisors ranked program graduates on overall student teaching success after they had successfully completed all mastery criteria. The first study compared students on achievement test scores, grade point average (GPA), and…

This chapter is limited to the specific employment practice of employee testing. The purpose is to distinguish between constitutional and statutory standards for challenging discriminatory testing practices and to propose procedures for developing, administering, and using tests as part of personnel decisions. Four Supreme Court cases are…

The Vocational Interest Survey (VIS) is a set of six questionnaire scales for measuring vocational interest. It is designed for Australian users and is consistent with Holland's theory that there are six basic career categories. This paper discusses the development of the VIS and presents some technical data on the questionnaires. Items were…

The role of testing in American education is becoming increasingly important in grouping students for educational purposes. This article reviews practices adopted by educators or administrators to improve student test scores. Stopgap measures for improving standardized test scores include (1) switching to easier tests; (2) eliminating certain…