Designed for use with individuals ages 3 months to 44 years, the Scales of Independent Behavior (SIB) measure adaptive behavior and problem behaviors in such areas as motor skills, social interaction, language, personal self-care, punctuality, destructiveness, and inattention. This paper describes the SIB's administration, scoring,…

The Test of Mathematical Abilities is used to identify students (ages 8-18) who are above or below age peers in 5 areas (attitude toward math, vocabulary, computation, general information, and story problems). This paper describes the test's administration, summation of data, standardization, reliability, and validity. (JDD)

Uses the various strategies involved in baseball to illustrate basic concepts in game theory. Specifically discusses Willie Mays' base-stealing strategy and how it relates to probability and risk. Reminds students that expected results depend on adopted assumptions. (MJP)

The Study Activity Questionnaire (SAQ) was administered to 83 college students who were enrolled in either an introductory research methods course or an introductory statistics course in the college of education at one university. At the beginning of the term the students completed the SAQ with reference to how they typically studied (pretest),…

Indicators of mathematics and science education progress are important to policymakers and the public in order to evaluate the quality of education. Recent reports have evaluated existing indicators and suggested core aspects of mathematics and science education that an indicator system should evaluate. This note discusses two fundamental aspects…

Detroit's Peer Teachers as Mirrors and Monitors Project is intended to validate cost effective methods for increasing Academic Learning Time (ALT) for students in grades one through four. A major problem in this research effort has been the design of valid and reliable measures of the components of ALT. One very important component of ALT is…

This study examined instruments measuring attitudes to science for the period from 1967 to 1977 as well as relevant research studies. Following an introduction (chapter 1), background information is provided in chapter 2, considering the importance of attitude measures in science education, reviews of research in science education, reviews of…

The development of a modified semantic differential measure of school-related attitudes of grades 3-6 children is described and its validation involving 99 children is reported. Each of the four scales of this measure, Attitude Toward-School, -Language Arts, -Teachers, and -Arithmetic, was found to be unidimensional. Internal consistency estimates…

This report contains accounts of the scale construction, reliability, and validity of an instrument used to collect parent survey data in a study of Catholic inner-city high schools. The survey was designed to ascertain parents' involvement in their children's schooling based on parental knowledge, reasons for school choice, expectations and…

In some testing programs an early item analysis is performed before final scoring in order to validate the intended keys. As a result, some items which are flawed and do not discriminate well may be keyed so as to give credit to examinees no matter which answer was chosen. This is referred to as allkeying. This research examined how varying the…

Reviews of 2,554 educational software programs by thirty reviewing sources were examined to compare the tendency of different review sources to give generally positive, negative, or neutral ratings. The reliability of language arts and reading software reviews was studied. Thirty-eight percent of the software programs were reviewed by two or more…

The evaluation team of the Lincoln Public Schools (Nebraska) used the multi-attribution utility technology (MAUT) approach to prioritize potential evaluation projects. The priorities were used to allocate resources to the district's most important projects, and to eliminate or scale down less important projects. The problem was caused initially…

Studies carried out over a 12-year period addressed fundamental questions on the use of Rasch-based item banks. Large field tests administered in grades 3-8 of reading, mathematics, and science items, as well as standardized test results were used to explore the possible effects of many factors on item calibrations. In general, the results…

The reliability of criterion referenced tests, which are often used to evaluate health education programs, may be conceptualized in different ways. Classical conceptualizations of test reliability have limited usefulness when applied to health-related criterion referenced tests. When a cutting score is set, test reliability can be represented as…

Four studies of the reliability and validity of needs assessment instruments developed by the Taylor Public Schools, Michigan, are described. The studies focused on the stability of student scores, classification stability, content validity, and concurrent validity. Consisting of separate tests for kindergarten, first and second grade, the…