The purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable "Environmental Attitude Scale" (EAS) for secondary school (5th, 8th grade), high school (11th) and undergraduate college students. The reliability and validity studies of the scale were carried out in three different countries (Finland, USA and Turkey). The sampling size was…

Distractor-driven multiple-choice assessment items and Rasch modeling were used as diagnostic tools to investigate students' understanding of middle school chemistry ideas. Ninety-one items were developed according to a procedure that ensured content alignment to the targeted standards and construct validity. The items were administered to 13360…

This study examined the construct validity of the Career Locus of Control Scale (CLCS) among diverse urban youth within the United States (N = 308). Confirmatory factor analyses verified two of the three models as acceptable fits. Two new models were also explored. Model 5 (Internality, Luck, and Non-Control), which was one of the new models, was…

Test score validity takes center stage in the debate over the use of high school exit exams. Scant literature addresses the amount of conditional standard error of measurement (CSEM) present in individual student results on high school exit exams. The purpose of this study is to fill a void in the literature and add a national review of the CSEM,…

The purposes of this study were to identify the essential dimensions of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and to establish a framework for assessing the ICC level of high school students that included a self-report inventory and scoring rubrics for online interaction in intercultural contexts. A total of 472 high school students from…

Differing findings exist on how Defining Issues Test (DIT) scores relate to intelligence. Further study is needed in order to address aspects of intellect not previously considered and to address how these relationships rival studies that have compared indices of intellect with constructs similar to DIT scores. In the present study, a sample of…

The fit of J. L. Holland's (1959, 1997) RIASEC model to U.S. racial-ethnic groups was assessed using circular unidimensional scaling. Samples of African American, Asian American, Caucasian American and Hispanic American high school students and employed adults who completed either the UNIACT Interest Inventory (K. B. Swaney, 1995) or the Strong…

The present study uses item response theory (IRT) to establish comparability between the English and Portuguese versions of the Goal Instability Scale (GIS), a measure of generalized motivation. A total of 2,848 American and 679 Portuguese high school students were administered their respective language versions of the GIS. Results showed only…