Analysis of social competence and problem behaviors for 164 special education students in grades K-3, using the Social Skills Rating System, found weak to moderate relationships between parents' and teachers' ratings. Gender comparisons revealed mixed findings. Results provide evidence for the instrument's convergent validity and suggest that…

Twenty students and 45 adults with visual impairments or blindness were administered a test of tactile concentration and short-term memory involving the reproduction of the order of finger stimulation using the Finger Knocking Box. Reliability and validity scores indicated encouraging results with use of the instrument. (JDD)

Analysis of spontaneous language samples of 10 children (ages 8-9) with specific language impairments found that interviews were a reliable, valid, and efficient assessment context, eliciting the same profile of behaviors as a freeplay context without altering diagnostic classifications. (Author/JDD)

The applicability of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) (in the informant-rating version) to mentally retarded adults was evaluated with 798 individuals. Evaluation of internal consistency, interrater reliability, factor analysis, and effects of age, sex, and degree of mental retardation indicated that the CDI is suitable as a diagnostic…

The Walker-McConnell Scale of Social Competence and School Adjustment is intended for screening and identifying elementary-aged school children with social skill deficits. The instrument is divided into two components covering adaptive classroom behavior and interpersonal social skills. This paper describes the test's administration, summation of…

The Psychological Maltreatment Rating Scales (PMRS) were developed for assessing psychological maltreatment in the mother-child interaction, and were used to rate the videotaped interaction of 49 high-risk mother-child dyads and predict child protective service involvements. The PMRS was found to be a moderately reliable and valid measure.…

This study examined the validity and internal and interrater reliability of the Wing Subgroups Questionnaire, an assessment that classifies children with autism into subtypes. Subjects were 42 students (ages 5 to 22) enrolled in multihandicapped special education classrooms. Findings support the reliability and validity of the questionnaire for…

Internal consistency and construct and criterion-related validity of the Conners Teacher Rating Scale were studied with 540 students (ages 5-10), with emphasis on its utility as a measure of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder and other disruptive behavior disorders. Internal consistency of factors ranged from .87 to .94. Convergent validity…

This review describes the theory behind two new measures of spoken word recognition for children with sensory aids, the Lexical and the Multisyllabic Lexical Neighborhood Tests. It then summarizes data concerning the tests' word familiarity, interlist equivalency, and test-retest reliability. Results indicate that deaf children with cochlear…

Given the complexity of classroom reading observations, maintenance of measurement reliability is a concern to researchers. Sources of variation contributing to the unreliability of many measurements may be either (1) lasting and specific, (2) lasting and general, (3) temporary and specific, or (4) temporary and general. Lasting-specific sources…

Research studies have pointed to a similarity between reading and listening that may imply that listening to writing is likely to be a useful means of evaluating it. Therefore a study was designed to determine the extent to which holistic scores assigned to student essays by readers correlate with holistic scores assigned to the same essays by…

Basically, two different forms of the sociometric technique for assessing children's peer status exist: peer-nomination and peer-rating. Although more popular, the peer-nomination technique has several psychometric deficiencies; these limit research efforts attempting to identify correlations between peer sociometric status and other social…

Psychometric theory has been one of psychology's stronger foundations and a major contributor to the recognition of psychology as a scientific discipline. Basic principles of psychometric theory led to the development of respected intelligence tests and large and comprehensive testing and assessment programs. This paper synthesizes major…

Order Analysis is a multidimensional scaling (MDS) technique for determining order among items. This paper reviews articles by different authors describing various components of ordering theory. A common nomenclature is constructed to link together the various ideas and is applied to a fairly simple set of data. Topics discussed include a more…

This research compares the Snyder (1974) and Lennox and Wolfe (1982) self-monitoring scales. The data indicate that the Snyder scale is multidimensional. The factors of the Snyder scale correlate dissimilarly with important characteristics of self-monitors. Only the other-directedness factor is significantly related to behavioral cross situational…