The Course Entry Inventory was developed to assess the affective characteristics of college students when they enter a course. The four dimensions measured were: affective characteristics upon entry, willingness to undertake course activities and accept instruction, perceived importance of the course, and self-reported level of apprehension about…

Empirical studies are reviewed of sex bias and psychometric bias in aptitude and achievement tests. It is concluded that: (1) of four studies of sex bias, all found that the language used in the tests favored males, but, at the elementary-secondary level, sex bias has been decreasing; (2) of 15 analyses of psychometric bias, all found an…

This guide begins with a series of questions and answers which introduce Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment (EQA) Inventory as a 188-to 190-item multiple choice test for fifth, eighth, and eleventh grades. Items are selected from a 400-item bank using matrix sampling procedures. Test results are analyzed at the school level; no…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 30 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: use of short and long passages in informal reading inventories, components in decoding spelling patterns, the psycholinguistic analysis of oral reading miscues and…

FOUR INSTRUMENTS WERE DEVELOPED AND STANDARDIZED TO MEASURE EARLY EXPERIENCE, CURRENT BEHAVIOR, TREATMENT APPROACHES, AND PROGNOSIS OF EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED CHILDREN--THE RATING/RANKING SCALE OF CHILD BEHAVIOR (R/R SCALE), THE PARENT PRACTICES INVENTORY (PPI), THE SCALE ON PROCEDURES IN DEALING WITH CHILDREN (PDC), AND THE CHILD HISTORY CODE…

The relationship between the difficulty with which the retarded adolescent decodes visual social cues and the appropriateness of his social behavior was the basis of a study to determine whether social cue decoding could be taught the retarded in a manner analogous to the teaching of reading and writing, with beneficial behavioral results. The…

The use of tests in personnel decisions has become an increasing legal liability for employers. The major questions raised by the courts concerning this use of tests are described. Current federal guidelines for performance appraisal systems, as established by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, are explained and traced to Title VII of…

Data on language competence and language use were obtained for 99 Spanish/English bilingual elementary school children (kindergarten through fourth grade) from Albuquerque. The children's language skills were assessed by teachers, interviewers, and the children themselves. The teachers and the children also estimated the extent to which the…

Structural integrity of a measure is defined in terms of its replicability, constancy, invariance, and stability. Work completed in the development and validation of the Self Observation Scales (SOS) Primary Level (Stenner and Katzenmeyer, 1973) serves to illustrate one method of establishing structural integrity. The name of each scale of the SOS…

This report describes the development and validation of the Unisex ACT Interest Inventory (UNIACT). In contrast to other interest inventories in common use, the UNIACT contains scales on which males and females receive similar scores. In the development of the UNIACT, more than 200 potentially sex-balanced items were administered to 10,211 people,…

This paper questions the purpose of testing in second language instruction. Comments are based on an examination of tests used by the Defense Language Institute for students of English as a second language. Two kinds of tests are used: the English Comprehension Level (ECL), used primarily as a basis for setting exit requirements, and "Book…

The methods and procedures of education in our schools must be reexamined according to the writers who have contributed to this document. This is most strongly felt in the areas of testing and evaluation for it is these areas that may have the greatest impact on a child's educational career. This document is presented in three sections: (1) An…

A 3-year study was conducted to validate the eight-factor Vocational Capacity Scale (VCS), designed for use with the retarded. Subjects were 366 institutionalized mental retardates, both educable and trainable, aged 15 to 30, who were administered the VCS twice, 1 year apart. Social workers and staff worked individually to promote the highest…

Papers presented at this conference discussed the educational evaluation and the problems of the socially disadvantaged. Topics were: "The Comparative Field Experiment: An Illustration from High School Biology," by Richard C. Anderson; "Evaluation of Teacher Training in a Title III Center," by Ethna R. Reid; "Evaluating a…

This study attempted to develop a valid instrument for the assessment of attitudes in kindergarten children and to evaluate two potential curriculum procedures for facilitating attitude growth. One experimental treatment evolved from role-theory and emphasized perceptual awareness and the ability to put oneself in the place of another; the other…