Gender, racial, and ethnic differences occur in vocational and cognitive ability assessments when the average scores of various groups are not equal. Results of such assessments indicate that not all groups are equally represented at all points of the assessment continuum. Many attempts to reduce or minimize existing group differences have been…

Discusses several examples of extraneous loaded elements that are included in various published phonics and reading comprehension materials and in teacher-made tests. (TO)

Presents documentation suggesting sex bias can be found in educational testing and suggests that a more objective treatment of women in educational tests can be made by showing women in a wider variety of occupations and activities and by more equal representation of women in test content. (Author/DN)

Discusses weaknesses and cultural biases of ability grouping systems and suggests methods for improving testing programs. (JF)

Findings of this survey indicate that important differences exist between experimenters and students on various issues of human research--psychologists expressing views much more ethically stringent than those by their most typical human subjects. (Authors)

Examines bias in testing, especially in relation to the goals of reading. (RB)

The author concludes that the continued administration of traditional ability tests to Black children without correcting for the cultural bias is a violation of the child's constitutional rights. (Author)

Bias in interest testing occurs if tests are used to encourage an individual to consider, enter, or reject an occupation or type of occupation on the basis of an irrelevant variable, sex. In general, the externally referenced inventories, which reflect the current state of affairs and have well established predictive powers, have the most…

Four definitions of cultural fairness" are critically examined. Suggestions for dealing with conflicts between the two goals of maximizing a test's validity and minimizing its culture-group discrimination, are presented. Terms in which this judgment should be made, and methods of using its results are described. (LR)

In examining response style effects on various commonly used fixed-response formats, Likert-type formats were relatively consistently affected regardless of the number of format categories. Nonanchored numbers were less affected. Across types, strong correlations for the linear formats and human faces made their use problematic. (Author/CM)

The effects of penmanship, complexity and accuracy of prose, length of answers, and use of quotations on marks awarded by English literature examiners were studied. The sex of students and examiners, untidiness, and prose complexity and accuracy were unrelated to grades. The results suggested that examiners avoid crediting students for…

Sixteen approaches for detecting item bias were compared on samples of Black, White, and Chicano elementary school pupils using the Lorge-Thorndike and Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices tests. Recommendations for practical use are made. (JKS)

Applied an internal criteria for the detection of bias to standardization data for the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts. Despite sizable social class differences in mean scores, differences in rank orders of item difficulties were negligible. There was little evidence of test bias. (Author)

The test-item bias literature is summarized, emphasizing the conceptual basis for bias detection methods and the technical issues involved in choosing among methods. It describes both judgmental and statistical methods for identifying biased items, and discusses the reconciliation of these two types of evidence. (Author/BW)

Six statistical methods for identifying possible sources of bias in standardized test items are presented. The relationship between chi-squared methods and item-response theory methods are also discussed. (Author/BW)