Retrospective pretests ask respondents to report after an intervention on their aptitudes, knowledge, or beliefs before the intervention. A primary reason to administer a retrospective pretest is that in some situations, program participants may over the course of an intervention revise or recalibrate their prior understanding of program content,…

The target paper, "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation" (Andrew Maul), raises some interesting critical ideas, both old and new, about the validation of self-report surveys. As indicated by Dr. Maul, recent policy initiatives in the United States (e.g., ESSA) have led to a demand for assessments of…

Dube, Rotello, and Heit (2010) argued (a) that the so-called receiver operating characteristic is nonlinear for data on belief bias in syllogistic reasoning; (b) that their data are inconsistent with Klauer, Musch, and Naumer's (2000) model of belief bias; (c) that their data are inconsistent with any of the existing accounts of belief bias and…

In "Assessing the Belief Bias Effect With ROCs: It's a Response Bias Effect," Dube, Rotello, and Heit (2010) examined the form of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for reasoning and the effects of belief bias on measurement indices that differ in whether they imply a curved or linear ROC function. We concluded that the ROC…

In their comment, M. L. Rohling et al. (2011) accused us of offering a "misleading" review of response bias. In fact, the additional findings they provided on this topic are relevant only to bias assessment in 1 of the domains we discussed, neuropsychological assessment. Furthermore, we contend that, even in that 1 domain, the additional findings…

In the May 2010 issue of "Psychological Bulletin," R. E. McGrath, M. Mitchell, B. H. Kim, and L. Hough published an article entitled "Evidence for Response Bias as a Source of Error Variance in Applied Assessment" (pp. 450-470). They argued that response bias indicators used in a variety of settings typically have insufficient data to support such…

Recently, J. J. Starns and J. L. Hicks (2005) have argued that source dimensions are retrieved independently from memory. In their innovative experiment, manipulating the retrievability of 1 source feature did not affect memory for a 2nd feature. Following C. S. Dodson and A. P. Shimamura (2000), the authors argue that the source memory measure…

In a recent article, A. Maydeu-Olivares and D. L. Coffman (2006, see EJ751121) presented a random intercept factor approach for modeling idiosyncratic response styles in questionnaire data and compared this approach with competing confirmatory factor analysis models. Among the competing models was the CT-C(M-1) model (M. Eid, 2000). In an…

In May 2008, the National Assessment Program--Literary and Numeracy (NAPLAN) conducted nation-wide tests for reading, writing, language conventions, and numeracy. A national assessment program of this kind should provide the stimulus for macro-level (systemic) analytical studies and micro-level (individual school and/or class) analytical studies…

The author replies to Jensen and Vernon's article and maintains that there is little reason for accepting Jensen's claims, particularly with respect to the major theoretical question. (Author/LMO)

Explains why some programs fail to prove themselves in evaluations yet have substantial benefits. Documents a method of administering self-reports, pre-then-post testing that helps to eliminate response-shift bias. (Author)

Four points are made in regard to the controversial reaction times studies: (1) apparatus used is not the best; (2) practice effects have not been thoroughly accounted for; (3) there is some evidence that simple reactions are different from choice ones; and (4) basic data to be explained are those which show substantial group differences.…

The analysis of racial differences has been a popular undertaking for social scientists, perhaps because it seems to be easy to do and it yields interesting differences. This study raises the possibility that the frequent finding of higher self-esteem scores among blacks compared with whites may be attributable, at least in part, to black-white…

Examined the view that White examiners impair the intelligence-test performance of Black children. Research literature clearly refutes the existence of race-of-examiner effects and indicates Black children's performance is not enhanced by examinations in Black dialect. Reasons for the persistence of the race-of-examiner myth are discussed. (Author)

Summarizes the Ralph Nader report on the Educational Testing Service (ETS). Tests reviewed include preschool, elementary, high school, and college admission; equivalency; financial aid; placement; and graduate school admission. The conclusion is that ETS has an overwhelming economic and political interest in maintaining the current testing system.…