Developed interview-based Geriatric Depression Rating Scale (GDRS) and administered 35-item GDRS to 68 older adults with range of affective disturbance. Found scale to have internal consistency and split-half reliability comparable to those of Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and Geriatric Depression Scale. Concurrent validity, construct…

This assessment of the reliability and validity of skills analysis programs within curriculum-based measurement (CBM), with various groups of handicapped and nonhandicapped youngsters, indicated that the skills analysis programs in spelling and math provided consistent information that related well to the primary graphed CBM scores. (Author/JDD)

Finds considerable instability across two administrations of Carbo's Reading Styles Inventory (RSI), for both the reading methods and the recommended adjustments for implementing the methods. Finds it unlikely that reported benefits from adjusting instruction based on the RSI derive from matching a method to assessed style. (SR)

The Swedish version of the Communication Strategies scale of the Communication Profile for the Hearing Impaired was evaluated in terms of descriptive statistics, corrected item-total correlations, principal component analysis, and internal consistency reliability. The study concludes that the scale is an adequately reliable and clinically useful…

Examined Parenting Inventory: Young Children (PI), rating scale measuring developmental expectations and behaviors of parents of young children. Data from 1,056 mothers revealed PI discriminated successfully between parents with children of different ages and had substantial content validity. PI was not strongly related to Adult-Adolescent…

This study analyzed production of a long vowel sound within Finnish words by normal or dysphonic voices, using the Self-Organizing Map, the artificial neural network algorithm of T. Kohonen which produces two-dimensional representations of speech. The method was found to be both sensitive and specific in the detection of dysphonia. (Author/JDD)

E.J. Bedrick recently derived the asymptotic distribution of the modified sample biserial correlation estimator of F.M. Lord and studied its efficacy for bivariate normal populations. A more detailed examination of the properties of Lord's estimator is provided, and the small sample bias and variance are studied. (SLD)

Offers a brief history of an attempt to establish predictive test validity with holistic scoring of writing tests. Asserts that holistically scored writing samples may be practical for some local purposes, but they must be used judiciously. Suggests monitoring the validity of local tests with statistical packages and using teacher ratings as…

The Milestone Reinforcer Survey was developed to assess reinforcer preferences of adults with mild to profound retardation living in community settings. Psychometric properties of the survey were established with 120 adults. The total reinforcer scores were found to be internally consistent, consistent across raters, and stable over time.…

Thirty-five gifted elementary children were tested with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III (WISC-III) and results were compared to a previous administration of the WISC (Revised). Scores were significantly higher on all three WISC-R global scales and most subtest scaled scores. Correlation coefficients between the tests were…

Reports on five studies on the development, conceptual validation, and behavioral validation of the Normative Message Processing Scale (NMPS). Compares the conceptual and predictive validity of the NMPS to related trait information-processing instruments. Argues for the need to develop an instrument that distinguishes between the tendency to…

The utility of a Korean version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) for identifying depression was studied for 860 Korean immigrants in Canada. Evidence supports the Korean version, although it is recommended that Positive Affect items be deleted to avoid overstating psychological distress. (SLD)

A discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of pragmatic approaches to foreign language testing focuses on why methods emphasizing holistic approaches to language through sensible experience are more effective than bit-by-bit, discrete-point, surface-oriented approaches that tend to neglect meaning. (21 references) (Author/CB)

The study, comparing 27 pairs of mildly mentally retarded students and normal achievers (ages 6-8), found that mentally retarded subjects evidenced lower performance on experimental oddity problems but were able to generalize to very different oddity arrays. High levels of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive accuracy, and negative…

Developed and investigated measurement properties of the Children's Academic Motivation Inventory (CAMI) using 382 junior high school students. Found evidence of the psychometric integrity of the CAMI. Suggests CAMI may have some utility in future research and in interventions designed to target specific aspects of motivational difficulties of…