The use of stepwise methodologies has been sharply criticized by several researchers, yet their popularity, especially in educational and psychological research, continues unabated. Stepwise methods have been considered particularly well suited for use in regression and discriminant analyses, but their use in discriminant analysis (predictive…

When the same parameters are estimated by data from several independent samples, it may happen that, for any pair of samples, even though the test for parameter discrepancy is statistically significant, the two individual confidence intervals overlap. To overcome this potential contradiction, a new type of one-sample confidence intervals is…

Rigorous comparison of the reliability coefficients of several tests or measurement procedures requires a sampling theory for the coefficients. This paper summarizes the important aspects of the sampling theory for Cronbach's (1951) coefficient alpha--a widely used internal consistency coefficient. This theory enables researchers to test a…

The NFER has devised a set of English proficiency tests suitable for immigrant junior-school children. What do these tests reveal about the levels of linguistic skill found in different immigrant groups? (Editor)

Use of Tukey's Jackknife in establishing a confidence interval around the population coefficient alpha is explored and the robustness of Feldt's procedure along with ten variants of the Jackknife when the data do not conform to the necessary normality requirements are evaluated. Only two of the variants compared to Feldt's approach. (RC)

The paper points out that, in working with special groups, correlations are often distorted because the variability of the measures being correlated are restricted in the groups. Presented is a formula whereby a Pearson product-moment correlation can be corrected for restrictions in range in situations where the basis of selection is unmeasured,…

This investigation had two major purposes. The first was to explore the use of an inferential technique called Tukey's Jackknife in establishing a confidence interval about cooefficient alpha reliability. The second purpose was to study the robustness of the Feldt and the jackknife procedures when the data fails to satisfy usual normality…

Three United States Air Force job inventory procedures were studied in depth, categorizing task statements by duties, interviewing technical advisers for job information, and detecting bias in survey samples. Variations in the usual grouping of supervisory tasks were found to be occasionally necessary. Depending upon the career ladder surveyed,…

While school systems most often use achievement test results for individual appraisals, increasing attention to program evaluation and accountability requires that test results be used for institutional appraisals as well. When institutional test results are desired--that is, results for schools or school districts--not all pupils need be tested.…

Some sampling characteristics of three estimators of the intraclass correlation were investigated under a variety of conditions within the context of a one-way analysis of variance. The results promote caution in the use of all three estimators. The three estimators differed very little in their bias or in their standard errors. (Author/JKS)