The construction of an objective, self-report, objectively-scored measure of achievement motivation is reported. Empirically keyed items were developed, reflecting empirical results found in a review of achievement motivation literature. An initial item pool consisting of 153 self-report items was administered using a matrix sampling approach to…

Test presentation mode significantly affected test performance in two randomized groups of college students exposed to audio/visual and visual test modes. A significant difference was found between test presentation mode and mean test scores; the audio/visual test mode was superior to the visual test mode; and the "brighter" students seemed to…

A followup study of 151 lower socioeconomic class children (under 6 years of age at the time of initial screening) was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) in predicting school achievement problems. Ss were originally categorized into three age groups (0-2 years, 2-4 years, and 4-6 years) and…

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability of the analytical method of grading essays in relation to the holistic method. It was hypothesized that the use of the analytic method to rate college composition papers produces high rater reliability at the expense of biasing the raters and thus lowering the validity of the grades. Six…

Subjects are asked to answer six questions, partly with a frequency and partly by marking a verbally anchored scale with five categories. Some univariate and multivariate analyses are performed to elucidate the relations between variables with the two different modes of response. Although there are similarities in results for the two types of…

Three basic concerns in measurement were selected, and their importance for the classroom teacher were illustrated. These were test validity, reliability, and problems in measuring achievement gains. Test validity was dependent upon content, type and quality of the questions, adequacy with which the test sampled reading skills, and the care with…

This is a report on further construct validation of the Sage Developmental Scales for the late adolescent period which intends to make these scales more useful to counselors of college freshmen. This study is also a further step in clarifying the dimensions measured by the Developmental Scales through the use of trait adjectives. It was…

Evaluation of the ratio of cost to benefit of instruction must play an important part in the formation of a public policy on education. However, it is doubtful if evaluation is sufficiently developed to play such a role, because evaluation is based on student responses to test items which contain an indefinite bias and cannot be accepted as…

This study examined the relationship between initial and final consonants on two equivalent forms of the Wepman Auditory Discrimination Test (WADT). Subjects were 128 first grade, English-speaking, Negro, disadvantaged children. The two WADT forms each contained 40 different word-pairs. Thirteen word-pairs differed in initial consonant (IPT); 13…

Four conceptually different variables in reading: (1) knowledge gained (new information), (2) amount comprehended (degree of understanding), (3) reading aptitude (differences between individuals), and (4) reading improvement (within individual changes as a result of treatment) are discussed. Existing measures of reading comprehension are evaluated…

The Career Development Responsibility scale was designed to measure the extent to which students feel that reinforcement in terms of success in preparation-acquisition performance situations in a career are considered to be contingent on the student's own behavior. The 30-item instrument was written so that two items represent each cell of a 3x5…

These guidelines deal specifically with the context in which the measurement of interests occurs and the interpretive materials which are made available to test users. They are classified and discussed in three categories: guidelines intended to inform the test user of possible factors influencing a sex-biased response on interest inventories;…

The general purpose of this study was to determine the effects of similarities between stems and keyed choices on test difficulty. Unlike previous investigations of this undesirable characteristic of some multiple-choice items, the present study employed items that were unintentionally faulty and samples of examinees who were highly experienced…

The purpose of this research effort is to validate the utility and effectiveness of a unique human performance measurement technique developed under ONR contract (N0001467C0107). Performance data on eight Navy ratings was collected from ships of LANTFLT and PACFLT. This report is the last in a series of technical reports on the statistical…

Item responses of two samples each of 622 normal and 573 educable mentally retarded children, 6 to 15 years of age, on Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices were submitted to a principal components analysis and varimax rotation. The following four factors were obtained: continuity and reconstruction of simple and complex structures, discrete…