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…

Eight fifth grade students participated in a study that investigated the effects of test context on test performance and subjects' perceptions of tests in varying contexts. In the first three contexts, reading of words in isolation was tested using materials drawn from three different informal reading inventories equivalent in difficulty level.…

A project to develop and validate a tape-based alternative to the interview-based speaking proficiency test is described. The objective was to produce an economically more viable test for less commonly taught languages, closely modeled on and readily interpretable in terms of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Interagency…

With the increasing emphasis on teacher competency testing, it is important to examine the usefulness of the currently available paper and pencil tests. At least 40 states in the United States now have, or are planning to have, teacher tests for initial certification. Some states have tests for career advancement, and 20 mandate tests for…

To determine whether U.S. Supreme Court judges have a systematic attitude toward court cases dealing with the law of newsgathering and fair trial-free press, and whether that attitude can help predict the outcome of the pending case Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court (II), this paper applies an attitudinal theory from the field of social…

This study describes the convergent, divergent, and factorial validity of a German C-Test in two parallel versions for German pupils in the fifth grade. The study investigated (1) the correlation between the C-Tests and the school grades in German, grammar, and English and with other language tests (convergent validity); (2) the correlation…