Valid assessment of professional competence has proven to be an elusive goal. Objective tests, direct observation of performance, overall ratings of competence, and simulations have been tried and found wanting in one way or another. Objective test items are criticized as being unrealistic and therefore invalid. Direct observation tends to be very…

The 73 tests included in this bibliography are aptitude tests for specific occupations that require some level of manual dexterity for successful performance. Many of the tests measure manual and finger dexterity, abstract, verbal, and numeric reasoning, and motor coordination. Some of these tests are work samples requiring manipulation of actual…

Performance-based certification for educational professionals has been stimulated by demand for accountability and educational reform. This article suggests simulated situations and situational response testing as a viable means of contrasting individuals across a number of criteria variables in realistic settings. (Author)

This manual provides the guidelines and components necessary for the planning and implementation of a basic bicycle skills test program. It is intended for use by enforcement personnel, city and town government officials, education and school groups, civic groups, or other interested persons. An introduction covers use of the manual and the…

A battery of physical ability tests was validated using a predictive, criterion-related strategy. The battery was given to 1,003 female soldiers and 980 male soldiers before they had begun Army Basic Training. Criterion measures which represented physical competency in Basic Training (physical proficiency tests, sick call, profiles, and separation…

Baumeister's (1968) hypothesis that mentally retarded children exhibit depressed levels of performance and greater intra-individual variability when compared to intellectually non-handicapped children of similar chronological age was investigated. Eight 10-year-old educable mentally retarded boys and 16 non-handicapped boys, matched by either…

Age, gender, and/or previous experience seem to be related to the performance/learning of new perceptual motor tasks. This study sought to determine the relative interrelationships of age, gender, and the depth of sport experience on initial practice of a complex perceptual motor soccer task for 46 children 4- to 9-years-old who were enrolled in a…

This study investigated the efficiency of video as an additional teaching aid for a statistics course offered by the Fernuniversitat (Open University, West Germany). A total of 65 distance students and internal students from the Universities of Bochum and Dortmund were divided into five groups to test the effects of five alternative treatments:…

An adaptation of the "Stages of Sensorimotor Intelligence in the Child" was used in a longitudinal study of the sensorimotor behavior acquisitions of 24 healthy middle-class infants. Rate of behavior acquisition, variability in behavior performance and relationships between subtests were analyzed. Some comparisons with previous studies are…

One of every six children in the United States is so weak, uncoordinated, or generally inept that he or she is physically underdeveloped by the standards of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. This booklet outlines diagnostic tests that can identify physical difficulties or shortcomings in children between the ages of 9 to 17…

Results suggest that a significant proportion of observed race differences on some performance tasks may be attributable to a failure of many blacks to use spontaneously an efficient verbal strategy rather than a genetic reasoning deficit. (Author/DEP)

A study was conducted to determine if Navy authors of instructional material could create effective memory aids for use in rote learning of material. A guidebook published by the Training Analysis and Evaluation Group was used in creating the memory aids. Navy school personnel used the guidebook to develop two training booklets incorporating…

The relationship of aptitude, strategy, and cognitive task performance is explored through the use of mathematical models of performance time. Models of strategy and strategy-shifting on a spatial visualization task were tested individually for 30 male high school and college subjects. For each of three successive task steps (encoding,…

Intended to assist those working in the field of occupational competency testing, this report summarizes major milestones in the history of competency measurement in vocational education and overviews the current state of the art. To provide an orientation to the environment that stimulated the current interest in occupational competency testing,…