Eight text banks that accompany cost accounting textbooks were evaluated for the presence of bias in the distribution of correct responses. All but one were found to have considerable bias, and three of eight were found to have significant choice bias. (SK)

Disagreement rages over wide SAT test score disparities among various student subgroups. Critics find the SAT inherently biased toward White males and a poor predictor of college performance. Others attribute score differences to differences in preparation. The College Board advises taking more vigorous courses, reading extensively, and taking…

The validity of the Gifted Student Screening Scale was evaluated with 479 students in grades four-six. Further testing of 54 students who scored just above and just below the cutoff score indicated the test was not racially biased and that the cutoff score was probably too low. (DB)

Notes that many of the tests used in a major statewide merit system had reading levels appropriate for high school, whereas the positions for which they were used to evaluate job applicants had reading requirements much lower. (RS)

Hilliard, a professor and expert on African culture, speaks about the racial and cultural bias of standardized tests, multiculturalism, the concept of race, Afrocentric teaching, Ebonics, recruiting and retaining African-American teachers, and the future classroom. (SK)

Discusses some of the most common myths about student ratings of teacher effectiveness and looks at the evidence from research on these issues; concludes that student ratings can provide powerful and useful information. Offers recommendations on the proper implementation, interpretation, and use of such evaluations. (EV)

Proposes additional ways for people in the measurement profession to think about the fairness of assessments and about the fairness of the uses of assessments. Suggests that measurement professionals must pay more attention to reducing group differences at the design stage of test development, to providing all examinees an opportunity to…

Several published claims have asserted that the general factor of intelligence derived from conventional intelligence batteries such as the Wechsler scales are biased in favor of verbal intelligence subtests, resulting in the observation of excessively large "g" factor loadings from these subtests. Using the single trait-correlated…

Lazraq and Cleroux (Psychometrika, 2002, 411-419) proposed a test for identifying the number of significant components in redundancy analysis. This test, however, is ill-conceived. A major problem is that it regards each redundancy component as if it were a single observed predictor variable, which cannot be justified except for the rare…

It is shown here that a grade distribution scheme commonly used to moderate peer assessments where self assessment is excluded is based on a false premise and will give an erroneous ranking in the situation where the best performer in a student group ranks the second best performer much higher than the other group members. An alternative to…

Scale indeterminacy in analysis of differential item functioning (DIF) within the framework of item response theory can be resolved by imposing 3 anchor item methods: the equal-mean-difficulty method, the all-other anchor item method, and the constant anchor item method. In this article, applicability and limitations of these 3 methods are…

Using a dynamic sequential sampling model and a recently proposed model for confidence judgments in recognition memory (T. Van Zandt, 2000b), the authors examine the tendency for rememberers to reverse their responses after a primary decision. In 4 experiments, speeded "old"-"new" decisions were made under bias followed by a 2nd response', either…

This simulation investigates bias in trait factor loadings and intercorrelations when analyzing multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) data using the correlated uniqueness (CU) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model. A theoretical weakness of the CU model is the assumption of uncorrelated methods. However, previous simulation studies have shown little…

The purpose of the present study was to examine a common practice in some areas of program evaluation, the retrospective pretest, and to present recommendations regarding its use. The authors review literature to emphasize first, that bias is likely in both prospective and retrospective ratings, and second, that under some circumstances,…

Since 2000, the General English Proficiency Test, a newly developed test of English, has been phased in by the Language Training and Testing Center in Taiwan. It has become the most universally used test of English in Taiwan, a fact that can be evidenced by its aggregate number of registered test takers. This article first describes the…