Presented are results of a study attempting to design a reliable and valid instrument measuring the attitudes of teachers toward energy conservation. A 22-item scale is presented as a result of several administrations to preservice elementary teachers. Items were submitted to Likert Item Analysis and further validated by principle components…

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate two hierarchically related measures of concept generalizability. The two concepts were "Insect" and "Animal." The tests were organized in a novel format consisting of three degrees of stimulus complexity. The three degrees of complexity contained sets of pictures of each…

The Multnomah County Education Service District (MCESD) provides the following support services to the 12 school districts in its jurisdiction in the metropolitan Portland area: (1) curricular support in terms of developing measurable goals and objectives; (2) support for nationally and locally developed group tests; (3) development and field…

One of the major assumptions of latent trait theory is that the items in a test measure a single dimension. This report describes an investigation of procedures for forming a set of items that meet this assumption. Factor analysis, nonmetric multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis and latent trait analysis were applied to simulated and real…

Described is the development and validation of a test designed to assess the cognitive levels of Jamaican sixth graders. Instead of the usual clinical procedure, a 30-minute videotaped test was designed in order to standardize variables associated with the test's administration. The film presented situations involving seven conservation concepts…

When criterion-referenced tests are used to assign examinees to states reflecting their performance level on a test, the better known methods for determining test length, which consider relationships among domain scores and errors of measurement, have their limitations. The purpose of this paper is to present a computer system named TESTLEN, which…

The Learning Activities Questionnaire (LAQ) was designed and developed to identify which of the following learning strategies were used by individuals in a variety of academic and training environments: rote (passive and active); physical; elaboration; and grouping. After undergoing two pilot tests, the final version of the LAQ was administered to…

Reading comprehension tests usually contain reading passages followed by multiple choice questions about the passages; but one potential weakness of this format is that the questions may be "passage independent," answerable without necessarily reading the passage first. When examining this phenomenon by assessing a particular test, the…

A study was commissioned to develop and validate a test to assess the attitudes of Alberta (Canada) students toward the world of work. An instrument was needed to examine the following five areas of concern: (1) attitudes toward earning a living; (2) perceptions about employer expectations; (3) perceptions about available opportunities; (4)…

The development and norming of a Spanish language edition of the United States Employment Service (USES) General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) is described. The new edition, called the Bateria de Examenes de Aptitud General (BEAG), was designed to replace an earlier translation, the BGPA, prepared for use in Puerto Rico. Forms A and B were…

The author contends that the crucial variable distinguishing two types of tests is the way in which the content domain is specified, rather than the use of norm-vs. criterion-referenced interpretations. Because some modes of content specification lead to specified domain and mastery interpretations, and some lead to open domains, the author…

The purpose of the present research was to study, systematically, the "goodness-of-fit" of the one-, two-, and three-parameter logistic models. We studied, using computer-simulated test data, the effects of four variables: variation in item discrimination parameters, the average value of the pseudo-chance level parameters, test length,…

This item bank was compiled by the Australian Council for Educational research (ACER) to help teachers at the secondary school level construct objective tests in arithmetic and algebra. The multiple-choice items were written by teachers who attended ACER writing workshops. The questions are classified according to their subject content and the…

A model for the measurement of reading skills was used as the basis for the development of the Decoding Skills Test. The model emphasizes that decoding skills are based on one of two processes: word recognition through phonic/linguistic decoding or through basal word recognition. Word lists appropriate for the elementary grades were used to…

An earlier study was extended and replicated to examine the feasibility of generating multiple-choice test questions by transforming sentences from prose instructional material. In the first study, a computer-based algorithm was used to analyze prose subject matter and to identify high-information words. Sentences containing selected words were…