Two aspects of the reliability of multidimensional measures can be distinguished: the amount of scale score variance that is accounted for by all underlying factors (composite reliability) and the degree to which the scale score reflects one particular factor (construct reliability). Confidence intervals for composite and construct reliabilities…

The authors describe a potential disconnect between research and practice in literacy assessment and instruction. They organize discussion around professionally recognized standards for the evaluation of educational assessments and assessment practices. These standards address both technical aspects of tests (e.g., validity; reliability;…

This study measured the effects of gender, age and their interaction on global self-esteem and physical self-perceptions (physical self-worth, PSW; physical condition, PC; physical strength, PS; attractive body, AB; sport competence, SC) of French adolescents. Global self-esteem (GSE) and physical self-perceptions were measured by the Physical…

Background: There has been relatively little research into therapeutic alliance in child and adolescent mental health and virtually no incorporation of alliance measures as a variable in treatment trials in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Method: A selective literature review on studies in therapeutic alliance in adulthood and…

A scale was constructed to assess children's generalized trust beliefs (CGTB) in four target groups (mother, father, teacher and peer) with respect to three bases of trust: reliability, emotionality, and honesty. The CGTB Scale was administered to 145 Year 5 and 156 Year 6 children (mean age = 10 years, 1 month) residing in the English Midlands,…

This article reports a study of the learning environments in computer networked classrooms. The study is unique in that it involved an evaluation of both the physical and psychosocial classroom environments in these computerised settings through the use of a combination of questionnaires and ergonomic evaluations. The study involved administering…

The complexities of neurobehavioral assessment of the fetus, which can be neither directly viewed nor manipulated, cannot be understated. Impetus to develop methods for measuring fetal neurobehavioral development has been provided by the recognition that individual differences in neurobehavioral functioning do not originate with birth and…

This study is a replication of an original study conducted by James and Blank (1991) which examined the relationship between educational attainment and adult performance using the Multi-Modal Paired Associates Learning Test-Revised (MMPALT-II) (Cherry, 1981). The MMPALT-II was designed to measure an individual's demonstrated perceptual modality…

Objective: The aims of this study were to examine (1) the psychometric properties of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire [CTQ; Bernstein, D., Fink, L., Handelsman, L., Foote, J., Lovejoy, M., Wenzel, K., Sapareto, E., & Ruggiero, J. (1994). Initial reliability and validity of a new retrospective measure of child abuse and neglect. American…

The purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) constructs of smoking refusal skill-efficacy, positive smoking refusal outcome expectations & importance and negative smoking refusal outcome expectations & importance. This article details the rigorous instrument development…

Forty-nine 2 years olds with social and language characteristics suggestive of autism were identified by community professionals and screening tools, then given a diagnostic assessment and reexamined at age 4 1/2. Agreement between autism clinic and screenings was high, with 88% receiving a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. The children were lower…

Motivating students to perform well on assessment tests is difficult when students know the results have no academic consequence. The present study evaluates the influence of assessment context (graded vs. non-graded) on the reliability of an assessment measure. Results indicate the graded condition produces higher reliability (r = 0.71) than the…

There is a paucity of test-retest reliability data for adolescent self-reports of a wide range of risk behaviours. Grade 8 and 11 Students (N=358) completed a questionnaire on two occasions between 10 and 14 days apart. It included items about use of various substances, violent behaviour, suicidality, and sexuality. Cohen's kappa was almost…

The current study reexamined the factor structure of the Lifetime and Recent scales of the Schedule of Sexist Events (SSE; Klonoff & Landrine, 1995) and conducted the first factor analysis of the SSE-Appraisal scale ( Landrine & Klonoff, 1997). Factor analyses conducted with data from 245 women yielded, for SSE-Lifetime and SSE-Appraisal scales,…

The issue of unfairness arises in high-stakes public examinations when students choose questions from alternatives that are offered and marks on the alternatives turn out to be discrepant. This paper addresses and defines unfairness and discrepancy in the context of alternative questions in Physics Tertiary Entrance Examinations (TEE) in Western…