This paper discusses a survey which was conducted to determine what licensers in different states say to parents who call them seeking help in selecting a day care program for their children, and confirms the assumption that parents have few resources available to help them select good day care. A questionnaire regarding the kinds of information…

A study was conducted to construct a preliminary version of a shortened form of the Occupation Analysis Inventory (OAI:SF). (The OAI is an instrument containing 622 work elements which are descriptions of work activities and conditions on which jobs and occupations are rated. The work elements were generated within a broad framework of five…

The reliability of the two most widely used course evaluation instruments at Indiana University was examined. The 38-item Form A, a modification of a course-evaluation instrument reported by Hildebrand and Wilson, at the University of California at Davis, asked students to rate instructors on a seven-point scale, from excellent to poor. The…

Faculty of the education department of a midwestern university were rated as teachers by both students and peers, and ranked by peers as to their effectiveness in service and research. Student ratings were gathered from three questions on The Student Description of Teaching form, which concerned assessment of the teacher, the is appended. Access…

This document presents proceedings of a 1976 conference on the assessment of teaching competence in special education teachers. The concerns identified for discussion were: (1) instruments for assessing interpersonal competencies in preservice special education students; (2) instruments for assessing teaching competencies in noninterpersonal…

This paper examines the question of the hereditary nature of intelligence and the validity of some of the statistical procedures which have been used in measuring the degree of hereditability. The author feels that proof of the question lacks sufficient scientific rigor for the support of any conclusion, particulary for a question of such…

A method for statistical analysis of semantic differential data in educational evaluation is discussed. Estimated scores for unobserved affective variables are obtained using the canonical factor regression method. This method overcomes previous prolems of bias and inefficiency in computing composite affective indices. In an application of the…

Instruments used to rate college teachers should undergo the scientific scrutiny expected of any psychological instrument. The construction of rating instruments through collective bargaining without scientific pilot testing thwarts the desired goal of assisting faculty and administrators in learning about teaching performance. These contentions…

Only a longitudinal study, in which retrospective reports can be verified against data collected earlier, can determine what topics tend to be reported accurately and whether certain types of individuals are more likely to be accurate reporters. A representative group of adults who became parents 50 years ago are now part of the oldest and longest…

A detailed description is provided of the variable belief in individual differences (INDIV), which is part of the analysis in phase I of the Evaluation of Practices in Individualized Schooling. The variable is defined; the questionnaires on which the variable is based are listed; the procedures used to scale the variable are explained; the…

A detailed description is provided of the variable general staff background (GSB), which is part of the analysis in phase I of the Evaluation of Practices in Individualized Schooling. The variable is defined, the questionnaires on which the variable is based are listed; the procedures used to scale the variable are explained; the distribution of…

A questionnaire containing all 78 items from the three forms of Robert F. Bales' Interpersonal Rating Forms (IRF) was administered to 266 college students to test the reliability and validity of the IRF. The questions asked for self-perceptions about one's roles and behaviors in task groups. The results indicated that the scales are neither…

This issue of Measurement in Education is presented in the form of a dialogue between Dr. Robert L. Ebel, Distinguished Professor of Educational Measurement at Michigan State University, and Dr. Samual A. Livingston, Program Research Scientist at the Educational Testing Service. Alternative views on some aspects of the use of tests in assessing…

This report describes a study comparing the classification results obtained from a one-parameter and three-parameter logistic based tailored testing procedure used in conjunction with Wald's sequential probability ratio test (SPRT). Eighty-eight college students were classified into four grade categories using achievement test results obtained…