Reports progress in the development of the Needsort, a research tool, for the assessment of the three developmentally earliest, within Maslow's framework, conative needs (physiological, safety, belongingness). Discusses item analyses, item selection methods, reliability studies, and validation studies across a broad range of populations. (Author)

The instrument,"Survey on Economic Attitudes", developed to assess attitudes toward economics as a subject and attitudes toward economic issues, should find many uses in research or evaluation studies. Data on reliability, validity, and norms obtained from a national sample of high school students and college professors are discussed.…

In comparison with the C-test, the cloze procedure is recommended for inclusion in a student placement test battery, and as an item of greater flexibility and with application to a wider range of placement test situations. The features considered were validity, reliability, scorability, economy, administrability, practicality, and discrimination.…

Field-tested a low reading-level version of the Rational Behavior Inventory on three separate groups of high school students (N=275). Results showed that the low reading-level version is reliable and correlates highly with the original version of the Rational Behavior Inventory. (Author/JAC)

An instrument was devised to test three components of leisure attitudes: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. A final test was administered to 1,042 subjects. The results supported the use of the three components in testing for leisure attitudes. (FG)

Teachers' questionnaire responses were used in developing an instrument designed to measure teachers' knowledge and attitudes concerning sex role stereotyping, and to explore relationships between knowledge and attitudes on sex differences. Results suggested that knowledge of sex differences does not ensure nonsexist attitudes. (Author/MJL)

Reviews 26 instruments developed to assess temperament at the infant, preschool, and school-age levels, giving particular attention to instrument content, standardization samples, reliability, and validity. It is concluded that, at present, no single psychometrically adequate instrument is available. Suggestions are made for future approaches to…

The issues of language assessment and placement raise several important questions: (1) What are the basic premises upon which current language assessment instruments have been developed? (2) What is the state of the art in language proficiency assessment? (3) What implications do current research findings have for language proficiency assessment?…

The Hand Test was administered to 30 male and 10 female eighth- to tenth-grade students transferred to an alternative school for acting-out behavior. When retested 21 days later, responses were significantly consistent supporting the reliability of the Hand Test variables related to acting-out behavioral tendencies. (Author/CM)

The outcomes of two scoring methods (one based on an error analysis and the second on a conventional method) on free-response tests, compared in terms of reliability and dimensionality, indicates the conventional method is inferior in both aspects. (Author/PN)

Compared the interrater reliability of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking for gifted and nongifted elementary school students. Results indicated most interrater reliability coefficients exceeding .90 for both groups. However, multivariate analysis of variance indicated significant mean differences across the three self-trained raters for both…

Concludes that for fourth and fifth grade students in compensatory reading programs, using test forms from a lower grade level and converting the scores might give a more reliable estimate of achievement. (FL)

An ignored aspect of standard setting, namely the possibility that Angoff or Nedelsky judges specify inconsistent probabilities (e.g., low probabilities for easy items but large probabilities for hard items) is explored. A latent trait method is proposed to estimate such misspecifications, and an index of consistency is defined. (Author/PN)

A shortened version of the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (MARS) was developed. It yielded a coefficient alpha reliability estimated at .98, correlated .97 with the original MARS, and showed relationships with state, trait, and test anxiety parallel to the original MARS. It should be useful for mathematical course-related applications.…