Intended to help in the forensic investigation of child abuse allegations, this book explores several issues related to children's allegations of sexual abuse and subsequent testimony. Chapter 1 presents an overview of: the informational needs of child welfare agencies and the courts; the scope of the forensic assessment; and the standards and…

In order to evaluate the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) vocabulary item format and to determine the effectiveness of alternative vocabulary test items, this study investigated the functioning of eight different multiple-choice formats that differed with regard to: (1) length and inference-generating quality of the stem; (2) the…

The "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education are intended to provide a comprehensive basis for evaluating tests. This digest identifies key standards applicable to most test…

The research literature provides important guidance to counselors working to keep abreast of the latest thinking regarding best practices and recently developed counseling tools. The purpose of this digest is to highlight a few errors that seem to recur within the literature, and to provide some helpful references that further explore these…

Two studies were conducted to develop an academic specific measure of college students' coping styles and to examine the relationship among student stress, coping style, motivation, and performance in a field setting. The measure of student coping style, the SCOPE instrument, included important academic coping strategies. For the first study,…

Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used to describe and categorize tasks from six graduate disciplines including academic psychology, applied psychology, English literature, journalism, physics, and electrical engineering. A sample of task descriptions was constructed through interviews with four or five graduate students from each…

The release of the newest Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), Fifth Edition, is the evolution of Raymond Cattell's conceptualization of the primary components of personality by analyzing adjectives describing human behavior. This updated version continues to measure the same 16 primary personality factors with improved reliability and…

Evidence is presented for the validity and reliability of a student annotation form used to collect student reflections on work samples in portfolios. The form was designed to be general enough to apply to many grades and subjects and simple enough for students at all levels to complete. The annotation forms asked students to indicate how…

The varying impacts of three instructional environments for introductory chemistry on the inquiry skills of undergraduate students were studied. The first two environments were traditional (TR) and guided-inquiry (GI) laboratory-based instructional situations, and the third was a separate lecture course for nonscience majors that emphasized…

The FACETS equating model meets the complex requirements for equating writing performance assessment across both raters and prompts. This study is based on an equating of the 1996 writing performance assessment in the Minneapolis Public Schools (Minnesota). Raters and prompts were equated simultaneously using the FACETS model. About 3,000 fifth…

This report provides an overview of a selection of measurement error studies conducted on National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) surveys. Its intent is not to offer new analyses of program data, but to summarize information from internal memoranda, working papers, and adjudicated reports about errors of measurement that occur during five…

This paper presents a specific bottom-up implementation method for getting started with multimedia for instructional support at the personal level. Some minimal top-down design considerations for an institutional multimedia system include: (1) the instructor should be able to take work from/to the desktop to/from the classroom; (2) the capability…

Three methods for the estimation of the reliability of single dichotomous items are discussed. All methods are based on the assumptions of nondecreasing and nonintersecting item response functions and the Mokken model of double monotonicity. Based on analytical and Monte Carlo studies, it is concluded that one method is superior to the other two…

New methods are needed to judge the quality of alternative student assessment, methods which complement the philosophy underlying authentic assessments. This paper examines assumptions underlying validity, reliability, and objectivity, and why they are not matched to authentic assessment, concentrating on the constructivist paradigm of E. Guba and…

This collection contains four papers that were presented as part of a short course delivered at the 1991 annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association. The papers discuss various aspects of the development and use of "The Competent Speaker," a public speaking assessment instrument designed for the college sophomore level. The papers and…