In recent years, many psychological constructs with associated measures have been proposed for educational research and the evaluation of educational programs. Among the most interesting and potentially useful are those reflecting motivational and volitional aspects of human behavior, the conative constructs. Among the conative constructs are…

In 1992, a study was conducted to determine whether student placement rates into college-level courses varied across subgroups of students at Golden West College (GWC), and, if so, the extent to which this disproportionate impact (DI) occurred. The standard of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for employee selection holds that DI…

This conference presentation describes the characteristics of a living educational theory, explores its implications for self-study methodology, and offers a self-study from an educative relationship with a teacher educator. The theory has its basis in the following ideas: educators exist as living contradictions when their values are negated in…

A study investigated the reliability, validity, and sensitivity of Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) reading (which relates reading fluency to reading comprehension) with bilingual Hispanic students. For 10 weeks, 50 second-grade bilingual students and 26 students who spoke English only were administered CBM reading measures twice weekly.…

In 1992, a study was conducted to determine the number and characteristics of Kansas students transferring from the state's community colleges to one of the state universities; the comparative academic performance, graduation, and persistence rates of community college transfers and their native university counterparts; and the relationship of…

Each spring, the New York City Public Schools conduct evaluations of first-graders to determine which students are in need of remedial reading and mathematics programs. A new measure was designed to be more reliable than the multiple-choice, standardized tests used previously. A checklist of 20 items relating to language arts, reading, and…

Problems of validity and reliability of concept mapping are addressed by using item-response theory (IRT) models for scoring. In this study, the overall structure of students' concept maps are defined by the number of links, the number of hierarchies, the number of cross-links, and the number of examples. The study was conducted with 92 students…

Research has shown contradictory results on the relationship of infant attachment security to play and mastery behavior, at times predicting the cognitive quality of play and at other times predicting the affective quality of play. In order to test the hypotheses that, during play, attachment security would predict only positive affect,…

A project was conducted to determine whether vocational interest and ability measures can help high school students identify vocational education programs in which they will experience satisfaction and success. Six Career Planning Program (CPP) interest measures and 15 ability measures were administered to 2,101 seniors in 19 area…

Two papers are presented that resulted from the Instructional Assessment Project of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing. Both relate to models for assuring assessment validity. The first paper--"Assessing the Content Validity of Teachers' Reports of Content Coverage and Its Relationship to Student…

This paper examines issues in designing post-school follow-up studies in special education. The examination focuses on survey research techniques, which are widely used in the investigation of post-school adjustment of former students with handicaps. In special education, survey research studies are used commonly to address many important…

The effectiveness of the freshman admissions prediction equation (FAPE) at the University of Georgia (Athens) was studied, using data for 3,378 freshman (1,490 males and 1,888 females) in 1987-88. For the 1987-88 data, a previous (1982) prediction equation functioned poorly in terms of predictive accuracy. New prediction models were constructed…

Results of testing the validity and reliability of the Australian second language proficiency ratings (ASLPR) are presented. In addition to providing a framework for planning English as a second language programs for immigrants to Australia, the ASLPR was developed to specify second language proficiency in terms of practical language skills. The…

This paper discusses issues which make it difficult to measure the teaching performance of college faculty. The issues discussed are those which could lead to ethical and legal problems should they be ignored--those issues which are sensitive because personnel decisions are made on the basis of evaluations. Simplistic methods, such as student…

A match or mis-match of cooperating teachers and student teachers on personality characteristics may have an important role in the overall effectiveness of the student teaching experience. Among the different personality factors that may affect participant relationships are flexibility, empathy, and self-esteem. To assess the validity of measures…