Examined the concurrent validity of the Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skill (OSATS), a new test of technical skills for general surgery residents. Correlations between OSATS scores and faculty rankings were generally high for six senior residents but low for six junior residents at the University of Toronto. (MDM)

This study compared the spelling of 7 students with functional blindness who read Braille with that of 180 sighted students reading conventional print. Students were in grades 9-11 and attending regular high schools in Quebec. The students with blindness were significantly ahead of their sighted peers in usage and grammatical spelling. (Author/CR)

A mini-pilot test was conducted by the Department of Labor's Employment Standards Administration to develop training on enforcing the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act. The situation that necessitated the test is presented; mini-pilot test examples are explained; and pros and cons of the mini-pilots are examined. A sidebar contains suggestions…

Offers alternative analyses and interpretations of Macmann and Barnett's research data and results. Contends that intelligence is complex and that intelligence testing is important component of school psychological practice. Discusses relation and frequent inconsistency between research and practice. (CRR)

Adults viewing a videotape of a basketball game were instructed to push a button each time the ball was passed. Adults without mental retardation performed better than those with mental retardation. When a woman carrying an open umbrella walked through the action, 15% of subjects without and 60% of subjects with mental retardation noticed her.…

Presents necessary information for administering the ICHPER-SD Asia Youth Health Related Physical Fitness Test, including descriptions of and scoring for each test item, needed equipment, notes, and suggested preparations for test leaders. The test includes the endurance run, situps in 60 seconds, pullups, sit and reach test, and skinfold…

Testing using the Golden State Examination, a performance test that employs a variety of testing modes, revealed that students share several misconceptions in biology and chemistry. Some of these misconceptions are shared in this article. (ZWH)

Evaluated the effectiveness of an educational game, "The Prosthodontic Olympics," to improve the speed of dental students in their performance of selected laboratory procedures. The students race to complete a procedure which is then judged for quality. Evaluation indicated participants increased their speed by as much as 50 percent without…

Changes in the profession of medicine are creating the demand for a substantive reexamination of current practices in medical education. Many of the major issues in addressing this challenge are structural and political rather than scientific; here we address one critical scientific issue that will be important to (though not by itself adequate…

The goal of the current study was to examine the validity and topic generality of a writing performance test designed to place international students into appropriate ESL courses at a large mid-western university. Because for each test administration the test randomly rotates three academic topics integrated with listening and reading sources, it…

Objective: To examine the ability of the flicker task to demonstrate greater utility in discriminating performance in young adults with and without ADHD compared to the Conners' CPT (CCPT). Method: Flicker task and CCPT performance were compared between an ADHD (n = 28) and control (n = 30) group of college students. Results: This study replicated…

Objective: There is considerable overlap in the constructs of attention and memory. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA), a measure of attention, to components of memory and learning as measured by the Children's Memory Scale (CMS). Method: Participants (N = 105) were…

To what extent are the discourse behaviors of examiners salient to participants of an oral performance test? This exploratory study employs a grounded ethnographic approach to investigate the perceptions of the verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal discourse behaviors of an examiner in a one-on-one role-play task that is one of four tasks in an…

The purpose of this document is to establish the statewide policy for the participation of students in the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS). The central elements of this policy are: (1) Rules for inclusion in the statewide assessment program (U-PASS); (2) Limited allowances for exempting or excusing students from…

In this article we examine empirical evidence on the criterion, predictive, transfer, and fairness aspects of validity of a large-scale language arts performance assessment, referred to as the Performance Assignment (PA). We use multilevel models to avoid biased inferences that might result from the naturally nested data. Specifically, we examine…