Discusses the quality of tests and makes suggestions for developing a better test. (YDS)

Discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using item banks while providing useful information to those who are considering implementing an item banking project in their school district. The primary advantage of item banking is in test development. Also describes start-up activities in implementing item banking. (SLD)

A research review (n=12) yielded a number of tools for assessing nurses' clinical competence but none that is universally accepted. The review did identify methods that could be used to develop a useful instrument. (Contains 23 references.) (SK)

The Study of Values instrument was updated by modifying 15 of 45 items and tested with 179 students who also completed the original version. Psychometric properties of the updated scales were comparable to the original. The new version eliminates dated language and improves religious inclusiveness. (Contains 29 references.) (SK)

Developed Career Factors Inventory, a multidimensional measure of career indecision containing two information factors (Need for Career Information and Need for Self-Knowledge) and two personal emotional factors (Career Choice Anxiety and Generalized Indecisiveness). Conducted reliability and concurrent validity analyses. (Author/ABL)

Defines goal of criterion development in Army's Project A as construction of multiple measures of major components of job performance such that total performance domain for representative sample of population of Army entry-level enlisted positions was covered. Describes major steps in job analyses, content sampling, instrument construction, and…

Analyzes uses and effects of coding schemes in research on counseling process and outcome. Concludes that interpretation of counseling events in terms of the categories of a coding scheme attenuates an adequate description of those events whenever the researcher uses the coder's interpretation of events as if it were veridical with the…

Describes a technique to create, administer, and monitor valid and reliable measures of basic students' writing skills. Shows how the test, requiring students to read a stimulus passage and prepare a written response, uses judgments of experienced language teachers to measure students' writing proficiency. Includes a sample exit-test prompt. (MM)

Developed Family Emotional Involvement and Criticism Scale (FEICS), self-report scale assessing perceived criticism and intensity of emotional involvement. Adult respondents (n=83) completed FEICS. Cronbach's alpha was 0.82 for Perceived Criticism subscale and 0.74 for Emotional Involvement subscale. Findings suggest that FEICS is reliable…

Presents dialog among David Lester, author of first critical survey of death anxiety measures, developer of scales, and researcher about suicide and fear of death; Donald Templer, Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) creator; and journal editor. Lester and Templer discuss origins, uses, results, limitations, and future of death anxiety scales and research on…

Criteria for planning, designing, and writing test items are suggested. The criteria were developed via a discussion by subject matter specialists, psychometricians, and test construction experts. Seven criteria proposed for test items of merit address the congruence of an item with its intended purpose, technical assumptions, and editorial…

Tips for designing user-friendly online surveys that can collect valuable data via the World Wide Web include the following: edit the questions, pretest, title the survey, provide an introduction, develop screening questions, determine length, offer promotional tie-ins, include the "other" option, make "no response" the default, provide a "clear…

Presents a variation of a "greedy" algorithm that can be used in test-assembly problems. The algorithm, the normalized weighted absolute-deviation heuristic, selects items to have a locally optimal fit to a moving set of average criterion values. Demonstrates application of the model. (SLD)

Investigated incorporating a testlet definition into the estimation of the conditional standard error of measurement (SEM) for tests composed of testlets using five conditional SEM estimation methods. Results from 3,876 tests from the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and 1,000 simulated responses show that item-based methods provide lower conditional…

Demonstrates the advantages for test construction, validity studies, and extensions of unidimensional item response theory (IRT) of applying classical factor-analytic treatments, based on the independent clusters concept, of confirmatory (restricted) models and exploratory (unrestricted) models to multidimensional IRT and obtaining standard…