This study investigated the contributions of maternal education and ethnicity to three dimensions of home-based parental involvement in young children's education and development: parental expectations about educational attainment, children's activities at home and outside the home, and family routines. Controlling for family background variables…

We report on the construction and application of an instrument entitled the "Science Achievement Influences Survey" to assess combined effects of student attitudes about science, peer interaction, and home support, and the frequency of student-centred and teacher-centred instructional practices on student achievement. Controlling for pre-test…

This article investigates the relation between home computer use and performance in English at school. The sample consists of 656 tenth-class students (age 15-16) in upper-secondary schools in Bergen, Norway. Data collection took place in the spring of 2002 and was administrated by the county education office. After correcting for gender, subject…

The idea that validity should be considered a property of inferences, rather than of assessments, has developed slowly over the past century. In early writings about the validity of educational assessments, validity was defined as a property of an assessment. The most common definition was that an assessment was valid to the extent that it…

This paper examines the educational impacts of the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative (BWLI), a pilot program that provided 1:1 technology access to all students and teachers across five public and private middle schools in western Massachusetts. Using a pre/post comparative study design, the current study explores a wide range of program…

At study was undertaken at California's College of the Canyons (CoC) to investigate the relationship between students' self assessments of skills on Computerized Assessment and Placement Programs forms and results from assessment tests in mathematics, reading, and writing. Data were collected on students who enrolled at the college in fall 1995…

The Study Activity Questionnaire (SAQ) was administered to 83 college students who were enrolled in either an introductory research methods course or an introductory statistics course in the college of education at one university. At the beginning of the term the students completed the SAQ with reference to how they typically studied (pretest),…

As part of an effort to statistically validate the placement tests used in California's San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) a study was undertaken to review the criteria- and content-related validity of the Assessment and Placement Services (APS) reading and writing tests. Evidence of criteria and content validity was gathered from…

This study was undertaken to develop guidelines for making interpretive inferences from scores on the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), a norm-referenced test of English-language listening comprehension (LC) and reading (R) skills, about level of ability to use English in face-to-face conversation, indexed by performance in…

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, student-reported high school grades, and scores for four other Admissions Testing Program tests were correlated with freshman grade point average for 299,794 students at 198 colleges from the enrolling classes of 1978, 1981, and 1985. The purpose of the study was to determine whether observed changes in…

There has been concern over the validity of the Algebra Diagnostic Test (ADT) used to determine the actual level of student preparation for the first quarter of calculus as taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It has been hypothesized that performance-based questions, along with the more traditional multiple choice questions,…

Numerous theories have attempted to explain possible factors relating to an individual's propensity for engaging or failing to engage in preventative health behaviors. The Health Locus of Control (HLOC) is now considered to be an important variable for understanding an individual's likelihood for following health promoting behaviors. This paper…

The relationship between locus of control and academic achievement was studied for 42 adolescent black males identified as at-risk by their teachers. The Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control scale (NS-LOC) for children was used as a measure of locus of control. School grade average and the Stanford Achievement Test (SFAT) battery composite provided…

To determine on which levels of cooperation most media specialists and public librarians function, and whether or not the cooperation is satisfactory, a survey was conducted of libraries and school media specialists in the Atlanta-Fulton County and Gwinnett County (Georgia) areas. Questionnaires (152) were mailed to 115 school library and media…

In this article some results are presented relating to the dimensionality of instruments containing polytomously scored as well as dichotomously scored items, concentrating on the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress' (NAEP) mathematics and reading assessment data and several simulated datasets. The maximum likelihood factor analytic…