Explains how changing the focus of the secondary school examination was used to improve the curriculum in Western Samoa. (ND)

The development of The Psychosocial Maturity Inventory, an attitude inventory based on an interdisciplinary model of psychosocial maturity, is described. It is a self-report instrument comprised of nine subscales and is suited for the assessment of youngsters in the approximate age range 11-18. (Author/BJG)

This paper presents the Aging Sexuality Knowledge and Attitudes Scale (ASKAS), an instrument designed to assess the particular aspects of sexual knowledge and attitudes as they relate to the aged. Development of ASKAS items from a survey of existant physiological research on sexuality in older adults and a review of social-psychological writing on…

A behavioral domain is well-defined when it is clear to both test developers and test users which categories of performance should or should not be considered for potential test items. Only those tests that are keyed to well-defined domains meet the definition of criterion-referenced tests. The greatest proliferation of criterion-referenced tests…

The first step in developing a communication competency assessment instrument is determining whether there is conceptual support for such an instrument. Funding should also be determined, since speaking skills must be assessed as a person speaks, a procedure that requires more time and money to complete than in the case of machine-scored tests.…

Results obtained from scaling the "Drug and Alcohol Survey" (DAS), a questionnaire that assesses the drug involvement of secondary school students are documented. The scales are evaluated in terms of their psychometric properties, their compatability with a change model, and their utility as outcome measures of substance abuse prevention…

This report describes research in progress at Duisburg University on a modification of the cloze principle in language testing. Four problem areas in classical cloze tests are isolated and discussed, namely, text selection, test construction, scoring, and interpretation. The "C-tests" in the process of development use the theoretical…

As one in a series of test item collections developed by the Assessment and Evaluation Unit of the Directorate of Studies, items of value from past tests are made available to teachers for the construction of unit tests, term examinations or as a basis for class discussion. Each collection is reviewed for content validity and reliability. The test…

As one in a series of test item collections developed by the Assessment and Evaluation Unit of the Directorate of Studies, items of value from past tests are made available to teachers for the construction of unit tests, term examinations or as a basis for class discussion. Each collection was reviewed for content validity and reliability. The…

As one in a series of test item collections developed by the Assessment and Evaluation Unit of the Directorate of Studies, items of value from past tests are made available to teachers for the construction of unit tests, term examinations or as a basis for class discussion. Each collection was reviewed for content validity and reliability. The…

Improved communication and cooperation between test publishers and school systems is essential for solving major test problems. Test-curriculum matching, test equating, and inappropriate use of grade equivalent scores are major problem areas. The degree to which a standardized test yields information relevant to what the system is trying to teach…

The work involved in preparing writing skill specifications that could be used to determine bilingual students' entry into and exit from bilingual programs is described in this paper. The first section of the paper details the steps involved in identifying the critical writing skills required in grades one through six, while the second section…

A series of studies on conceptual and design problems in competency-based measurements are explained. The concept of validity within the context of criterion-referenced measurement is reviewed. The authors believe validation should be viewed as a process rather than an end product. It is the process of marshalling evidence to support…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and construction of three objectives-based tests to assess preservice teachers' performance in an instructional skills course. The three tests covered: writing worthwhile objectives, designing effective instruction, and assessing student learning. All tests were analyzed for item difficulty, item…

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,…