The Language Proficiency Interview's structure, administration, and rating scale are outlined by an officer of the organization that designed it (Educational Testing Service), and some common mistakes made in its administration are listed. The need for training in the test's administration is emphasized. Its application in the corporate situation…

The symposium, "Taming the Rasch Tiger: Using Item Response Theory in Practical Educational Measurement," was organized to deemphasize the technical complexities of item response theory (IRT) and to show the audience how IRT can be used in practical educational measurement. Four papers from the symposium are summarized and comments are…

Among opportunities to advance the state of the art of intelligent computer-assisted instruction (ICAI) are the evaluation of ICAI systems and the use of the underlying technology in ICAI systems to develop tests. Each issue is addressed via its theoretical context, key constructs, appropriate references to the literature, methodological aspects,…

This study attempted to determine if there was a change in job attitude among employees of a state institution for the developmentally disabled after a move to new, superior facilities. An attitude scale was constructed and administered in December 1982, prior to the move. A second testing occurred two months later, after Experimental Group I had…

Methods to contextualize tests in the four skill areas of listening, reading, writing, and speech are described. The roles of grammatical and lexical cues, recording semantic details, cloze adaptation, comprehensive questions, logical continuation items, global classification, and sociolinguistic factors are examined in relation to test formats.…

Concern for enhancing construct validity of vocational interest measures provides a focus for scale construction quite distinct from that derived from a criterion-referenced strategy: Construct-oriented measurement implies: (1) substantive definitions of dimensions; (2) concern for internal consistency reliability, as well as generalizability; (3)…

This paper discusses questions pertinent to a definition of cognitive structure as the knowledge one possesses and the manner in which it is arranged, and considers how to select or devise methods of describing cognitive structure. The main purpose in describing cognitive structure is to see whether differences in memory (or cognitive structure)…

The Connecticut Assessment of Educational Progress (CAEP) is designed to provide legislators and educators with information on the strengths and weaknesses of students in 11 curricula areas. In addition, the Educational Evaluation and Remedial Assistance (EERA) program was developed to assess student proficiency in the basic skills of reading,…

Guidelines are provided for designing and conducting a telephone opinion poll of the community. Issues discussed in the first part of this guide include determining the proper sample size, drawing a representative sample of the general adult population or of voters, selecting phone numbers, making call-backs, obtaining the proper male-female…

Future research in Follow Through should be eclectic and comprehensive. In particular, the setting for Strand Two of the National Institute of Education's (NIE) research program for Follow Through should provide opportunities for sponsors of innovations to implement programs targeted at many outcomes. There should be a commitment to measuring…

Three samples (N=474; N=389; N=417) of special education and mainstream teachers were asked to complete the Teacher Stress Survey (TSS). Developed for the study, the TSS consisted of questions on personal and professional characteristics and on perceived teacher stress in terms of six factors: (1) professional distress, (2) discipline and…

The reliability and validity of the Social Avoidance and Distress (SAD) and Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) scales developed by D. Watson and R. Friend (1969) were tested for their use with university students in Thailand. Thai translations of both tests were administered to 176 university students on two occasions, with a month between…

Four research papers on the evaluation of the Utah State Department of Employment Security's (USES's) General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) for the deaf are presented. The studies were conducted by the test research staff of the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina from 1970 to 1979. The studies contain not only the analyses on which…

A review of the literature on the evaluation of writing in English as a Second Language (ESL) discusses research in four areas: (1) general discussions of basic issues in large-scale ESL composition evaluation; (2) accounts of the development of particular instruments and programs for measuring the ability of ESL writers; (3) reports of research…

Seventy-five subjects (Naval F-14 and E-2C crew members) were administered computer-based and paper-based tests of threat-parameter knowledge represented as a semantic network in order to determine the relative reliabilities and validities of these two assessment modes. Estimates of internal consistencies, equivalences, and discriminant validities…