An evaluation was made of the effectiveness of an empirically derived five-item questionnaire, the Teacher's School Readiness Inventory (TSRI), in identifying at-risk or failure-prone preschool children. Screened with the TSRI in the spring of either the prekindergarten or kindergarten year, four samples totalling 453 children were followed…

The family is an obvious group for whom problem solving effectiveness holds importance. Problem solving interaction refers to the manner in which the behavior of family members is organized to resolve situations in which there is an unachieved but attainable goal, and the means to overcoming the barriers to achieving the goal are not apparent, but…

This study was conducted to determine whether the administration of translation of an English language, teacher attitude test to teachers of other cultures would measure the same things as does its English original. The Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory (MTAI) was given to 509 French Canadian elementary school teachers, and the factor structure…

The author conducted a cross national analysis of sociological research reported in leading journals at two points in time over a ten year period to determine if sociologists' ability to produce valid social generalizations had improved significantly over the recent past. The official journals of the United States (American Sociological Review),…

A scale was developed to assess several types of motivation in elementary school children. In addition to the usually recognized internal and external motivation, a third type, termed "amotivation," has been postulated. Students are amotivated when they do not perceive a link between outcomes and their own actions. The preliminary…

The present study: (1) describes the development and make-up of a comprehensive semantic differential measure of school related attitudes for young children; (2) presents evidence for the reliability and the discriminant and convergent validities of the measure; and (3) discusses issues pertaining to the measurement of school-related attitudes in…

This paper discusses variables influencing written composition quality and how they can best be controlled to improve the reliability of assessment of writing ability. The study aimed to concentrate on the effects of different imposed time limits on student performance in written composition at grade 10 level using methods of generalizability…

The similarity between two scales for assessing socioeconomic status was examined from longitudinal data on the achievement of Canadian students. Toronto's Longitudinal Study of Achievement sampled the complete senior kindergarten population (8,679 5-year-olds) in 1961-62, classifying father's occupations according to Hollingshead and Redlich's…

A rating scale was developed that could be used to test Raynor's construct of perceived instrumentality--that the perceived importance of a particular achievement (such as a good grade) to the student's future (career) influences the student's efforts to achieve the goal. The scale was developed to study the perceived importance of learning French…

In an effort to develop non-biased assessment techniques for the native languages of native Canadians, and to facilitate identification and intervention for language disorders among native children, the ratings of children's Inuktitut language samples by an untrained Inuit teacher were compared with length complexity data derived by linguistic…

An examination of the applicability of self-assessment as a tool for student placement in foreign language instruction focused on: (1) the ability of first-year university students to assess their performance level in the second language through a self-assessment questionnaire; (2) the quality of the questionnaire itself and its potential for…

The Second International Mathematics Study was conducted in 20 countries under the sponsorship of the International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Among the instruments used in this study was a questionnaire investigating student attitudes about school, instruction, and mathematics. The fit of an a priori model that…

The Tetreau-Trahan Visual Interest Test (TTVIT) was constructed to counteract the influence of verbal and cognitive factors in the measurement of vocational interests. Two forms were developed--a pictorial test based on color slides of various occupations, as well as a verbal form to be used in comparative studies with samples of persons from…

Problems of validity and reliability of concept mapping are addressed by using item-response theory (IRT) models for scoring. In this study, the overall structure of students' concept maps are defined by the number of links, the number of hierarchies, the number of cross-links, and the number of examples. The study was conducted with 92 students…

Scores on mental ability and academic skills for 1958 and 1978 of representative sample of grade 4 and 7 classes in Saskatchewan were compared. The selected students were administered appropriate levels of the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Tests, and the Canadian Tests of Basic skills in vocabulary, reading, language skills (spelling, capitalization,…