A study involving a sample of people selected to represent the nonimpaired American population, aged 16 to 74 years, was undertaken to determine the effectiveness of the Wechsler Memory Scale--Revised. The scale's subtests were designed to assess memory of personal and general knowledge, logical memory, verbal paired association, figural memory,…

The School Survey provides a needs assessment technique for county alcohol and drug abuse agencies. The survey was designed for students in grades seven through twelve. Recommendations were made to survey only seventh, tenth, and twelfth graders. These proved to be representative of the secondary school population. Localized surveys of South…

The "Parent Needs Inventory" (PNI) is designed to identify needs and concerns of parents of very young handicapped children and to provide an objective measure of program effectiveness. Using the Q-sort process, the PNI compares the parent's "real" and "ideal" perceptions of themselves in three areas--the grieving…

Film study course development for British CSE students. (CH)

Problems posed by the measurement of vocational maturity are discussed. A combined rational-empirical methodology is proposed as a possible solution and a model of vocational maturity is formulated. (Author)

Estimates for the variances of empirically determined scoring weights are given. It is also shown that test item writers should write distractors that discriminate on the criterion variable when this type of scoring is used. (Author)

Research performed pursuant to a grant from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.

A neglected element in designing tests is that of publicness, that is, the extent to which test specifications are understandable and usable by all interested parties. Issues related to content validity, such as test bias and instructional sensitivity, become accessible to these parties once content validity and design have been adequately…

This study examined the effectiveness of two different domain definition strategies in achieving homogeneity of criterion-referenced test items. The argument was tested regarding the extent to which item writers following the Instructional Objectives Exchange (IOX) domain definition strategy for a cognitive skill generate items that are more…

A framework, or classification scheme, is provided for displaying the spectrum of criterion-referenced tests. This framework illustrates that no single type of test can be identified as the absolute prototype criterion-referenced test. It is shown that over the past 115 years criterion-referenced testing has grown to be a many-faceted concept, its…