Interest in and use of the System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment's (SOMPA's) Health History Inventories (HHI) has been intensive despite the unavailability of psychometric data estimating its stability. This paper reports the results of a longitudinal study designed to provide data on the stability of the HHI over a four year period. The…

The New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test (NJCBSPT) is designed to measure certain basic language and mathematics skills of students entering New Jersey colleges. The primary purpose of the two mathematics sections is to determine whether students are prepared to begin certain college-level work without a handicap in computation or…

The use of three remedies for errors in the measurement of ability that arise from differences in rater stringency is discussed. Models contrasted are: (1) Conventional; (2) Handicap; and (3) deterministic Rater Response Theory (RRT). General model requirements, power, bias of measures, computing cost, and complexity are contrasted. Contrasts are…

Baumrind (1971) proposed three distinct patterns of parental authority (permissiveness, authoritarianism, and authoritativeness) and measured these parenting styles through interviews with parents and their children and through observations of parents interacting with their children. This study was undertaken to develop a readily-accessible,…

This paper provides principles which can be used to mark mathematics papers in secondary schools. Sections included are: (1) "Drafting the Marking Scheme" (describing 15 general considerations); (2) "Calculations" (listing 16 grading principles on computation papers); (3) "Graphs" (providing four guidelines on graph papers); (4) "Constructions"…

Since 1977, South Carolina law has required every school to develop annual and long-range (3-year) plans based on a needs assessment. Based on a 1984 law, the State Board of Education adopted the following effective schools indicators as bases of assessments: (1) instructional leadership of the principal; (2) emphasis on academics, including basic…

This initial study phase deals with the accuracy of the information provided by students on the newly revised Student Descriptive Questionnaire (SDQ). The SDQ, an optional part of the College Board's Admissions Testing Program, is intended to supplement the information base to improve the quality of decisions made by college admissions personnel,…

An item format incorporating pattern recognition was designed to assess medical students' abilities in the area of clinical diagnosis. A group of approximately 20 faculty members of five New England medical schools met in Worcester for half of a day to develop pattern recognition items. Teams of four to six physicians were assigned to work on…

This study describes a computer based, performance rating information processing system, performance rating theory, and programs for the application of the theory to obtain ratings free from the effects of reviewer stringency in reviewing abstracts of conference papers. Originally, the Performance Rating (PR) System was used to evaluate the…

This paper begins with an overview of several instruments for assessing the school environment, focusing on Moos's Work Environment Scale (WES). Although the WES was designed for use in any work milieu, its 10 dimensions of work environment (involvement, peer cohesion, staff support, autonomy, task orientation, work pressure, clarity, control,…

This study gathered information on the communication skills of preservice teachers using a rating scale based on the Speech Communication Association's (SCA) newly developed list of Teacher Communication Competencies. The research focused on two questions: (1) Can raters from different backgrounds with different levels of training reliably use a…

Attitude measurement through Likert-type surveys usually provides no opportunity to assess the importance of the statements of the subjects. This study, involving 479 graduate and undergraduate students, examines the question of whether importance and agreement measures have different underlying dimensions, and examines the question of whether the…

This document is a training module designed to familiarize practicing school psychologists and school psychology students with the field of criterion-referenced measurement and recent developments within the field. The introduction gives reasons for the need for criterion-referenced testing as opposed to norm-referenced tests which include legal…

The primary purpose of this study was to devise a valid and reliable scale to assess the teaching concerns of early childhood students at various levels in their teacher training experiences. A total of 167 concerns, generated by 104 teacher trainees, their trainers, and an extensive review of the literature, were classified according to Katz's…

Because item order and salience may affect the findings of social science research, a study was conducted to determine the effect of topic salience on subject response to different item orders. In the study, 10 high salience self-esteem items were presented with 10 low salience items concerning product labels in three versions. In the first…