Prior research has indicated that items administered to college students for rating their instructors, can be empirically as well as logically classified on a continuum from very general to specific. Three of these hypothesized classifications of item specificity--global, general concept, and specific--were chosen to represent this continuum.…

The reliability, validity, and utility of various measures of career development as they are used with postsecondary deaf students were investigated. Career development was defined as the students' knowledge about various career areas, and secondly, the quality of the students' present career decision. Four commercially available measures of…

The Socio-Sexual Knowledge and Attitudes Test was designed to measure the attitudes and knowledge of retarded individuals in fourteen areas: (1) anatomy/terminology; (2) dating; (3) marriage; (4) intimacy; (5) intercourse; (6) pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing; (8) masturbation; (9) homosexuality; (10) alcohol and drugs; (11) community risks…

Least squares and Bayes methods were used in a cross validation study conducted for comparison purposes. The study applies to situations with the following conditions: predictor data are given on the same scales; criterion data may be given on different scales; and it is necessary to pool data even though criterion scale differences exist. Such a…

Differences among test item writers and among different rules for writing multiple choice items were investigated. Items testing comprehension of a prose passage were varied according to five factors: (1) information density of the passage; (2) item writer; (3) deletion of nouns, as opposed to adjectives, from the sentence in order to construct…

The D-48 and D-70 (Dominoes) Tests, which are parallel forms of a non-verbal, cross-cultural test, were administered to 82 college students and 112 high school freshmen. Criterion scores were obtained on the Otis Quick Score and grade point average for the college students, and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills for the ninth-graders. Results showed a…

This study investigated the predictive validity of the Teacher Performance Assessment Instruments (TPAI) using pupil gains on teacher-made tests (TMT) as a criterion. The TPAI and the TMT's were administered to 56 elementary and secondary classrooms in Georgia. Results supported the validity of the TPAI with a large number of correlations ranging…

A sixth-grade mathematics test was evaluated in two different ways, and the evaluations were compared. One method of evaluation was to use the Rasch model for item analysis and to accept or reject items on the basis of the extent to which the data fit the model. The other method of evaluation was to ask school superintendents and teachers to rate…

The Functional Language Assessment (FLA) is a screening test which, when used in combination with teacher ratings and English achievement test scores, helps identify students, aged 5 through 13 from non-English speaking backgrounds, in need of bilingual programs. The language proficiency test can be administered by school staff who do not speak…

An overview is presented of a performance-based assessment system, Teacher Performance Assessment Instruments (TPAI), developed by the Teacher Assessment Project at the University of Georgia to measure competencies of beginning teachers for initial professional certification. To clearly separate the preparation and certification functions within…

EVIDENCE ABOUT THE CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF PRESUMED VOCATIONAL MATURITY FACTOR SCORES WAS OBTAINED BY STUDYING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FACTORS OF VOCATIONAL MATURITY AND A GROUP OF CONCURRENT VARIABLES DEEMED RELEVANT TO VOCATIONAL MATURITY. THESE VARIABLES WERE CLASSIFIED INTO FIVE GROUPS--FAMILY SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, ABILITY AND ACHIEVEMENT,…

ALTHOUGH MOST EDUCATORS AGREE THAT EXAMINATIONS PERFORM AN IMPORTANT FUNCTION IN APPRAISING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT, SOME CLAIM THAT MULTIPLE CHOICE TESTS DEGENERATE INTO A GAME OF "BEAT THE MONKEY," I.E., ANSWERING MORE THAN 25 PERCENT OF THE ITEMS CORRECTLY, THE RATING EVEN A MONKEY COULD BE EXPECTED TO RECEIVE. SAMPLE STUDIES REVEAL THAT THE…

A SOCIOMETRIC TEST WAS USED TO COMPARE THE SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE OF MENTAL RETARDATES IN THE GRADE SCHOOL SPECIAL CLASSES AND THE REGULAR CLASSES. MODIFIED SYRACUSE SCALES OF SOCIAL RELATIONS (SSSR) WERE ADMINISTERED IN TEST-RETEST DESIGN TO 400 CHILDREN. AN EXAMINATION WAS MADE OF THE FOUR SPECIAL NEEDS SCALES. CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE DATA…

This monograph reports the development of a semantic differential designed to measure professional self perception in student teachers. Seven scales were identified by factor analysis of the responses of 396 student teachers to 56 adjectival pairs used to rate the concepts "Myself,""Myself as I would like to be,""Myself as…

The effect of two student characteristics (sex and grade point average) and two class variables (educational level and expected grade) were investigated as they pertain to the validity of college student ratings of teaching effectiveness. Students completed the Teacher Effectiveness Questionnaire (TEQ) the last week of the semester. The TEQ…