This paper reports on evaluations of a projective measure of self-esteem adapted from the Tasks of Emotional Development (TED). The evaluations were conducted in 7 studies with a total sample of 416 children and adults. The revised TED uses a five-point scoring system ranging from negative to positive self-esteem. Interrater reliability in the…

The effects on Rasch measurement of both response underfit (noise) and overfit (mutedness or superuniformity) are described and illustrated. Misfit is identified by mean-square fit statistics. Person separation and reliability are shown to be deceptive indicators of measurement effectiveness when some items exhibit marked overfit. Theoretical…

Persons with acute and chronic illnesses must frequently respond to a number of illness-related tasks and stressors. Changes in an individual's coping style over the course of an illness, however, are rarely studied. Most coping inventories are too long to be practical for the necessary repeated administration. A study was undertaken to develop a…

The sporadic investigations regarding children's concepts of death have lacked standard methods or instruments for evaluating these conceptions. Whether or not research on children's concepts of death can be gauged by a standard set of questions is explored in this paper. It reports on the evaluation of a new questionnaire's (Concept of Life and…

This paper discusses the results of a study that investigated the validity and reliability of the Ecology Rating Scale (ERS). The ERS is a brief, multi-dimensional level-of-functioning instrument that can be rated by parents or clinicians. The ERS is comprised of seven domains of youth functioning: family, school, emotional, legal/justice,…

Research on child influence upon parent behavior motivated the development of a Parent Report of Child Behavior Toward the Parent Inventory. Internal consistency reliabilities of 31 five-item scales ranged from .69 to .95 with a median of .88. Varimax rotation of three principal component factors yielded dimensions of Control, Acceptance versus…

Experimenter bias effects were experimentally manipulated in a sample of 97 school psychologists scoring 3 subscales (Similarity, Vocabulary, and Comprehension) of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III). First year (n=29), interns (n=42), and experienced (n=26) psychologists were randomly assigned to either a bias or…

The stability of the Adaptive Behavior Inventory for children (ABIC) over a 4-year period was investigated. The sample was composed of 44 children, distributed approximately equally within racial and ethnic groups (Anglo-American, Black, Mexican-American), socioeconomic group (middle and lower), and gender. Three types of stability were…

The reliability and validity of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC) was studied with 675 adolescents aged 12 to 18 recruited from clinical and community sources. The STAIC is a self-report measure that has been widely used to assess state and trait anxiety of children. It has been suggested that the child version may be more…

The Parenting Stress Index (PSI) is a clinical and research self-report instrument designed to identify mother-child systems which are under stress and to indicate the sources of stress. It is based on the research literature in child development, parent functioning, and stress. The normative sample for the PSI consisted of 470 mothers with at…

Special problems confront the researcher measuring the attitudes of young children who cannot readily make cognitive judgments associated with conventional psychometric scales, such as Likert scales. One measurement strategy, called the method of paired comparisons, can overcome these difficulties. The method is explained in this paper. A small…

This paper critiques current models for evaluation of mental health services provided to children and adolescents with emotional disturbances and offers an alternative model. The most popular model, Donabedian's tripartite model, is described. This model separately evaluates three domains: (1) structure (characteristics of the care providers,…

This paper examines the discriminative validity of the Learning Efficiency Test II (LET-II; Webster, 1998) in distinguishing among children diagnosed as having ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) only, ADHD and an accompanying learning disability, ADHD-predominantly inactive type, and a control group. Children (N=132) between the ages…

The Children's Perception of Support Inventory (CPSI) which assesses the extent to which children perceive their families and peer networks as understanding, responsive, and supportive is described. This measure was constructed (1) to differentiate children on family and peer-support scales and to demonstrate the relationship between the…

Attention deficits and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (AD-HD) are regarded as relatively common disorders among school-age children, but the literature reveals several confounding factors with the standard assessment techniques for the disorder. Using a structured thematic apperception technique (the TEMAS Apperception Test of G.…