A study investigated the reliability and validity of a measure of imagery vividness appropriate for young children. A questionnaire instrument consisting of 21 Likert-type items was developed and administered to 380 third- through sixth-grade children in a lower-middle to upper-middle socioeconomic population in southern California. Items in the…

The Certificates of Foreign Language Proficiency are general purpose tests of language use designed for the adult learner in Finland. This paper deals with the techniques of validation used when designing the test specifications and implementing these into the first versions of the tests. The data comes from the development of tests in one…

Research in how the Rorschach Inkblot Test has been utilized in the assessment of object relations is reviewed. The review includes a critical examination of six areas: (1) constructs and concepts of object-relations theory represented in the research; (2) relevant Rorschach history and history; (3) characteristics of Rorschach-based,…

Many textbooks in educational measurement and classroom assessment have chapters devoted to specific item formats. There may be attempts to relate one item format to another, but the chapters and item formats are largely seem as distinct entities with only loose and uncertain connections. This paper synthesizes these discussions. An item format…

The AGS Early Screening Profiles (AGS:ESP) instrument (P. Harrison, 1990) has been introduced recently as a screening instrument for predicting mental ability. A study was conducted to determine the degree of concurrent validity between the AGS:ESP and the Stanford Binet Fourth Edition (SB:FE), an instrument often used by psychologists to detect…

Various classical approaches to evaluating test bias are reviewed, and their conceptual underpinnings are discussed. Bias is examined as it relates to predictive validity, rather than construct validity. One of the first test bias models was developed by T. A. Cleary (1968). Cleary's work with test bias and regression stimulated others to develop…

A study used the seven elements of B. D. Ruben's Intercultural Behavioral Assessment Indices (IBAI) to investigate the concept of intercultural communication competence. Subjects, 149 foreign students enrolled in a large midwestern university in the United States, completed five questionnaires designed to measure the seven elements of the IBAI…

In foreign language testing, as in all testing, validity is the primary criterion for test quality. However plausible the concept of validity, in practice it is not always easy to arrive at congruence between the test situation and the real-life situation the learner is expected to master. Some language educators make authenticity a major…

Leadership has been considered a personality trait, some specific type of behavior to be learned, or the result of a combination of circumstances. As a special instance of leadership, management style has suffered the same definitional problems, but lately it has been considered a complex phenomenon, with three basic elements: the leader, the…

The validity of results from international assessments depends on the correctness of the test translations. If the tests presented in one language are more or less difficult because of the manner in which they are translated, the validity of any interpretation of the results can be questioned. Many test translation methods exist in the literature,…

It has been postulated that young people are open to driving accidents because of age, lack of experience and risk-taking attitudes. The Young Driver Attitude Scale (YDAS) was developed to measure attitudes likely to influence driving practices. Over 200 items relating to the risk-taking attitudes of young people were shown to a small group of…

Most patients with diagnosable major depression may fail to show the classic symptom pattern for which standard assessment instruments were designed. To investigate the influence of subtype of depressive illness on Zung Self-Rating Scale (SDS) and Hamilton Rating Scale (HRS) validity, 36 in-patients, who met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual…

Berko's Wug-Technique, using invented words to test linguistic knowledge, has been used with a wide range of age groups, and test results have been treated identically when obtained from children who controlled fully the construction in question in their spontaneous speech or from children just acquiring it. A study of seven-year-old and…

To ascertain if the descriptive criteria of the original Evaluation Scale of the City University of New York (CUNY) Writing Skills Assessment Test might be refined in the light of CUNY's 4 years of experience with large scale testing, a two-phase study was conducted over the period of 1 year, from May 1981 through June 1982, and involved nearly…

Suggests that when MMPI responses are secured from black samples and interpreted according to traditional actuarial or code book descriptions the questionnaire is capable of working against the welfare of man. (Author/AM)