Educating for Success, an instructional program designed to enhance college student self-esteem through analysis of personal successes and strengths, values identification, conflict management, and positive reinforcement was validated with 394 first-year college students in experimental and control groups. Results showed significant improvement of…

Mail survey, telephone survey, and keeping time were compared as methods of assessing teaching time for 74 sixth grade teachers teaching language in the Netherlands. Results suggest that each of the three methods can be used to assess the mean total score, but none can assess individual scores. (SLD)

Three studies involving 79 teacher leaders, 4 school empowerment experts, and 387 secondary school teachers indicate that the 38-item School Participant Empowerment Scale (SPES) may tap 6 dimensions of empowerment within the school organization identified in the literature. The SPES effectively measures perceived empowerment in school settings.…

This study of 1,477 rating forms on students (grades 6-12) with mild disabilities attending mainstream vocational courses found that curriculum-based vocational assessment is a feasible means of assessing student career/vocational behaviors and skills. A two-factor solution representing work-related behaviors and generalized instructional outcomes…

Reports a study examining the concurrent validity of concept maps as vehicles for documenting and exploring conceptual change in biology. Elementary education science methods students who were instructed on marine life zones showed significant differences on their concept maps on this topic. (PR)

Focusing on educational measurement that suggests an action and has an outcome, 16 problem areas are defined and grouped into the following classes: (1) validity; (2) issues of statistical adjustment; (3) data insufficiencies; (4) other issues related to standardized testing and constructed responses; and (5) technical issues of psychometrics.…

Analysis of the use of a cloze-procedure test to measure the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) proficiency of Japanese college students revealed that the cloze test correlated significantly with an essay test and improved prediction of ESL proficiency, suggesting that carefully constructed cloze tests could be useful in integrative language…

Employing standardized achievement tests to ascertain educational quality is like measuring temperature with a tablespoon. Such tests are prone to testing-teaching mismatches, omitted items, and confounded causation problems. Actually, three factors influence students' scores: what's taught in school, native intellectual ability, and out-of-school…

This article describes the Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning-Third Edition, a global screener designed to be administered to children ages 3 through 6.11 years. The instrument assesses motor skills, conceptual knowledge, language skills, self-help skills, and social behaviors. Its administration, standardization, reliability,…

A study examined the efficacy of the Restricted Academic Task in evaluating the effects of stimulant medication in 149 children (ages 5-17) with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The measure consists of standardized observation of a child performing an academic-like task, and was found to be both reliable and valid. (Author/CR)

Describes the development of the Early Adolescent version of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (EA-HOME) Inventory. Presents information on its usefulness with African Americans, Chinese Americans, European Americans, Mexican Americans, and Dominican Americans. Notes findings indicating high interobserver agreement, with…

Examined the underlying factor structure of a rating scale to assess perceived barriers and supports for early childhood inclusion. Identified a single support factor and three barrier factors with adequate internal consistency: (1) program quality; (2) community resources; and (3) coordinating and integrating services for children with…

The relations between motivational constructs, effort, self-efficacy and worry, and statistics achievement were investigated in a sample of 360 undergraduates in Malaysia. Both trait (cross-situational) and state (task-specific) measures of each construct were used to test a mediational trait (r) state (r) performance (TSP) model. As hypothesized,…

In this paper, we respond to the criticisms and concerns raised by D.V. Cicchetti, A.S. Kaufman, & S.S. Sparrow (this issue) in their review of the PCB literature, with particular attention to our own research in Michigan. We agree that multiple comparisons and functional significance are issues that would benefit from more discussion.…

Background: Although delineating the processes by which children appraise the family as a source of security from their collective experiences in the family subsystem has assumed center stage in many conceptualizations of child development, the dearth of measures of child adaptation in the family system has hindered empirical advances. Therefore,…