This program of research has three general thrusts. First, the relations between motivation and achievement performance were studied across children of various sociocultural backgrounds including lower- and middle- class white, black, and hispanic children. Motivational test bias was found to be strong for students of all sociocultural…

Questions are raised about the time within a test administration period that may be available for review for those candidates who have time enough, or more than enough, to finish. The assumption is proposed that rate of work may be normally distributed. The rate of work for those who have finished a test cannot be determined from their answer…

This statement presents the position of and addresses the needs of the professional members of the American Personnel and Guidance Association (APGA) divisions and regions. The seven sections discuss: (1) the development of the statement; (2) guidelines for avoiding charges of irresponsible practice; (3) qualifications of test users (those who…

AN INTRODUCTION WHICH STATES THE PURPOSES OF AN EVALUATION OF FLES PROGRAMS AND STRESSES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VALUE JUDGMENT AND EVALUATION IS FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION OF THE RELATION BETWEEN EVALUATION AND CURRICULUM. TEST AND MEASUREMENT PROCEDURES FOR EVALUATING FLES PROGRAMS ARE THEN SUGGESTED. A CONCLUDING SECTION INDICATES THE DESIGN OF A…

This report consists of three sections, the first of which is a discussion of placement testing. It is maintained that the strengths and weaknesses of a tested population cannot be determined by a single composite test--yet, many institutions place students in beginning courses on the basis of such limited information. To assess basic capabilities…

This paper presents a study of the relationship between scores on the Bayley measures of mental and motor development administered at 8 months of age and performance on measures of cognitive development and school achievement administered at ages 4, 5, 6, and 7. Also studied are changes in this relationship which occur when children with extreme…

The purpose of this study was to compare certain characteristics of multiple-choice (MC) and complex multiple-choice (CMC) achievement tests designed to measure knowledge in medical-surgical nursing. Each of 268 junior and senior nursing students from four midwestern schools responded to one of four test forms. MC items were developed by…

While most foreign language programs list communicative language use as a primary goal, classroom tests seldom reflect this objective but rather focus on discrete-point linguistic competence. The authors present a model of the communication process and point to the main task in constructing tests of communicative competence: devising simulated…

Much of the intrinsic wealth of planning and instructional information available from achievement testing programs goes untapped in typical reporting procedures. Large-scale programs reporting only pupil scores and the results of aggregating those scores stop far short of the purposes intended and fail to realize the potential of such information.…

In order to screen out items which may be biased against some ethnic group prior to the final selection of items in test construction, a statistical technique for assessing item bias was developed. Based on a theoretical formulation of R. B. Darlington, the method compares the performance of individuals who belong to different ethnic groups, but…

This study sought to assess the effects of psychological warm-up on the verbal creative thinking abilities of first-grade children. The subjects were 96 black first-grade children enrolled in two schools in Athens and Atlanta, Georgia. Both schools are located in poor neighborhoods. Children were randomly assigned to control, physical warm-up, and…

Three pyramidal adaptive tests and a conventional peaked test were constructed and administered by computer to two groups of students enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses. Six methods of scoring pyramidal tests were evaluated with respect to score distributions, stability, and the degree of relationship among scoring methods and between…

A study was made to ascertain how large a sample is needed to make media effectiveness decisions which are generalizable to the total educable mentally handicapped (EMH) population. The method employed in the study involved pretesting and posttesting a sample of 70 primary and intermediate EMH children on the content of a filmstrip. Statistical…

The Leadership Laboratory for Student Development program, its rationale, objectives, and evaluation findings are discussed. The Leadership Lab, created to prepare a student leader to interact with a variety of people found in the typical school setting, provides students with structured learning experiences that progress from basic communication…

Three propositions which may suggest a strategy for meeting the measurement needs of education are presented: (1) Educational measurement possesses enough techniques and principles to permit tackling problems for their intrinsic importance, rather than for their convenience of fit to answers we already have; (2) Measurement needs are a subset of…