Little information has been generated regarding the convergent and discriminant validity of measures used to investigate children's ethnic attitudes. The present study explores these aspects of validity by examining the relationships among three measures of ethnic attitude and between these measures and two measures of egocentrism. Attitude…

A number of researchers have described individual differences in achievement goals and performance standards. To explore similarities and differences in these theories, and to provide an instrument to measure them, 273 female and 88 male college students responded to items designed to measure each of the dimensions defined by these theories. The…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised (WISC-R) Freedom from Distractibility (FFD) factor and other neurocognitive measures were examined as to their discriminative validity in diagnosing children with Attention Deficit Disorder/Hyperactivity (ADD/H), ADD/H children with concurrent Conduct Disorder, and children comprising a clinic…

The present study involved the testing of two common multiple-choice item writing rules. A recent review of research revealed that much of the advice given for writing multiple-choice test items is based on experience and wisdom rather than on empirical research. The rules assessed in this study include: (1) the phrasing of the stem in the form of…

While scales assessing psychological well-being have been used both as criterion measures and as variables of interest in their own right, there has been little attempt to deal with the issue of the time-boundedness of perceived well-being. A study was undertaken to examine the combined factor structure of two measures of well-being, the…

A study was conducted to further validate the "Watson-Barker Listening Test." The subjects, 120 students enrolled in basic speech courses, completed the Receiver Apprehension Test (RAT) and the Watson-Barker Listening Test: Form A. Statistical analysis of the results revealed a significant correlation between the RAT scores and both the…

Standardized reading tests and associated issues involved in the teaching of reading skills are discussed, with illustrative examples of reading tests commonly used in Australia. The nature of standardized reading tests is analyzed, and the circumstances under which such tests should be used are outlined. Interpretation of scores from standardized…

A validation study assessed the effectiveness of the Air Force Occupational Attitude Inventory (OAI) in predicting job satisfaction, reenlistment intent, and reenlistment behavior. First, the OAI survey instrument was administered to 1,217 first-term airmen in 1973 and to 4,784 first-term airmen in 1975. Next, criteria consisting of concurrent…

Correlational studies establishing the validity of language skill tests have traditionally described how well the tests have converged, that is, yielded equivalent results. Convergent and discriminant validation is a logical extension of these traditional procedures. However, since it requires evidence of discriminant as well as convergent…

The use by interviewers of a deliberate, prearranged, and consistent overall structure, comprising warm-up, level check, probes, and wind-up, can strengthen the content validity of interview tests. Moreover, the flexibility necessary for elicitation is increased if an established battery of well-structured tasks exists for candidates to perform.…

A project was undertaken to develop and implement domain-referenced tests (DRTs) for welders' helpers. After analyzing the results of a state survey of welding job titles and related tasks and after consulting with postsecondary educators and industry personnel, researchers developed DRTs to measure various tasks typically performed by welders.…

To assist the clinician or researcher in scale selection, four symposium papers discussed instruments available to measure test anxiety (TA), with special attention given to the newly-developed Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI). Following an integrative summary delivered by the chairperson (DeVito), the first paper (Conetta and Tryon) reviewed the two…

Of the 15 substantive papers in this report, 12 focus on the use of the Kent Infant Development (KID) Scale with severely handicapped children. The KID Scale measures 252 behaviors usually developed during the first year of life in five domains (cognitive, motor, language, self-help, and social). It was successfully adapted to elicit reliable…

Type A behavior is an aggregate of behaviors associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease. Two self-administered questionnaires used to determine the presence of Type A behavior, the Jenkins Activity Survey and Framingham Type A Behavior Pattern Scale, were administered to 150 undergraduate students at a midwestern university, along…

This article discusses practical and theoretical problems related to the measurement of formal operations. The first section of the article discusses problems in measuring formal operations using the clinical interview method. These problems include the lack of both a standardized interview and a uniform scoring procedure. Section two discusses…