The population discrepancy between Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha (L. Cronbach, 1951) and scale reliability with fixed congeneric measure, uncorrelated errors, and sampling of subjects was studied. The difference is expressed in terms of the individual component violations of the assumption of equal tau-equivalence that is necessary and sufficient…

Examined the sampling distributions of equating coefficients produced by the characteristic curve method for tests using graded and nominal response scoring using simulated data. For both models and across all three equating situations, the sampling distributions were generally bell-shaped and peaked, and occasionally had a small degree of…

Most studies on occupational stress concentrate on chronic conditions, whereas research on stressful situations is rather sparse. Using an event-sampling approach, 80 young workers reported stressful events over 7 days (409 work-related and 127 private events). Content analysis showed the newcomers' work experiences to be similar to what is…

This longitudinal study analyzes the time budget and the quality of experience reported by new parents. Five primiparous couples were repeatedly administered Experience Sampling Method. They carried pagers sending random signals 6-8 times a day; at the signal reception, they filled out forms sampling current thoughts, activities, and the quality…

This report presents selected findings from the school principal data files of the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is a nationally representative sample survey of public, private, and Bureau of Indian Education-funded (BIE) K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The public school…

The aim of this study is to examine the cognitive errors as predictor of quality of life of mainstreamed elementary students. Quality of life is the degree of well-being felt by an individual. The functional deficiencies, which occur due to physical, cognitive, sensory, emotional disorders, affect the quality of life of the individuals. In this…

This study examined the percentage of task-sampling variability in performance assessment via a meta-analysis. In total, 50 studies containing 130 independent data sets were analyzed. Overall results indicate that the percentage of variance for (a) differential difficulty of task was roughly 12% and (b) examinee's differential performance of the…

Understanding the concept of the sampling distribution of a statistic is essential for the understanding of inferential procedures. Unfortunately, this topic proves to be a stumbling block for students in introductory statistics classes. In efforts to aid students in their understanding of this concept, alternatives to a lecture-based mode of…

Progress monitoring is an important component of effective instructional practice. Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a form of progress monitoring that has been the focus of rigorous research. Two approaches for formulating CBM systems exist. The first is to assess performance regularly on a task that serves as a global indicator of competence…

A strong base of research is needed to guide investments in teacher professional development (PD). This article considers the status of research on PD and articulates a particular direction for future work. Little is known about whether PD can have a positive impact on achievement when a program is delivered across a range of typical settings and…

Extant data collected through the Experience Sampling Method--a signal contingent method for gathering data about students' immediate experiences--were analyzed to describe adolescents' subjective experiences doing homework. Analyses were conducted to explore variation in subjective experience in relation to the contexts in which homework was…

The focus of this First Look report is on base-year contextual data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09). This First Look is intended as a companion to the report, "High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09): A First Look at Fall 2009 Ninth-Graders (NCES 2011327)" (ED521115), which focuses on the mathematics…

This handbook for training program evaluators provides background information and practice activities in the following areas: (1) measurement: purposes, ideals, possibilities; (2) defining measurement domains; (3) person and item sampling; (4) test and item selection--with a selected list of standardized tests with pertinent information on each,…

"Musical imagery" is the experience of imagining music in the "mind's ear". A study was conducted to explore the prevalence and nature of musical imagery for music students in everyday life, using experience-sampling methods (ESM). As a group, music students reported that imagining music was a very frequent form of musical…

Background: The ability of descriptive assessments to differentiate functions of problem behaviours might be increased by systematically sampling natural contexts characterized by different establishing operations. This study evaluated the stability of such characteristics, and variability in challenging behaviour, for three school contexts.…