Few arguments about education are as effective at galvanizing public attention and motivating political action as those that compare the performance of students with their counterparts in other countries and that connect academic achievement to economic performance. Because data from international large-scale assessments (ILSA) have a powerful…

In this article we are presenting the results of the research "The Connection between the Results in the National Assessment of Knowledge and the Pupils' Socio-cultural Environment, Instruction and Homework," taking place at the National Education Institute, Slovenia, in the years 2008/2009. In the introduction we are writing the…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Revised (WISC-R) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) were administered in counter-balanced order to 81 children aged 7-12 in New South Wales, Australia. Canonical correlation analysis showed the total redundancy values of WISC-R given WISC and WISC given WISC-R to be .58 and .61…

Forty-three adolescents (11-16 years of age) attending a health care program, Project Alternatives, for "street children" in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, drew randomly assigned pictures of either the ideal man or woman, engaged in some activity. These drawings were compared to samples from adolescents in various parts of the world to assess…

Items in the verbal (Hebrew and English) sections of the Psychometric Entrance Test (PET) administered for university admission in Israel were studied for differential item functioning (DIF) between the sexes. Analyses were conducted for 4,354 males and 4,901 females taking Form 3 of the PET in April 1984, and 3,786 males and 3,815 females taking…

The aims of the present study were threefold: (1) to test for the equivalency of an hierarchical three-factor structure of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) across English and French versions for non-clinical adolescents; (2) given evidence of poor model fit, to validate the factorial structure of the BDI French version across three independent…

The Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT) instrument has been widely used to gather cross-cultural data regarding the acquisition of logical thinking skills in adolescent children. This study of West German adolescents using the instrument adds further comparative data regarding the development of logical thinking skills. Additional data…

This overview of research focuses on the characteristics of immersion programs in the Ottawa area. These are primary-entry, late-entry (grade 6 or 7), and secondary level bilingual programs. The following matters are treated: tests and testing conditions; comparisons with Canadian Public Service language requirements; comparisons between groups…

The unprecedented development of self-help groups confirms their importance, but few studies have focused on prevention and self-help groups. Two methods for investigating preventive potential are outcome studies and process analysis. To assess the presence of helping processes in self-help group meetings, a process analysis was developed to…

Intellectual abilities were measured for 217 German and 205 American college students using tests (in the subjects' native languages) in which equivalence was established by an item-response theory-based differential-item-functioning (DIF) analysis. Comparisons between groups were not the same before and after removal of DIF items. (SLD)

Use of the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test in Australia was studied by comparing it with existing research, scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), and other attainment tests. Subjects were 142 children aged 7-11 years. The suitability of the instrument in Australia is discussed. (SLD)

Extending the earlier work of B. M. Byrne and P. Baron (1990), the factorial invariance of the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was tested using 351 non-clinical adolescent males and 334 non-clinical adolescent females. All subjects were in grades 9 through 12 and attended the same secondary school in a large metropolitan area in central…

The collection of data by face-to-face interviews and questionnaires is common and literature in these areas is extensive; but few cases are reported in which respondents have been provided with a blank audio cassette tape, interview schedule, or open-ended questionnaire items, and been invited to record their own comments and forward these to the…

The evolution of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) and certification process is traced. The challenges posed by combining, for certification purposes, the scores from internal and external assessments of school candidates are discussed in the face of the low reliability of teachers'…

Learning mode preferences of secondary school students were compared for 1,259 students from Sydney (Australia), 837 students from Perth (Australia), 2,125 students from England, and 570 students from Minneapolis (Minnesota). Students were in grades 7 through 12. Preferences for cooperative, competitive, and individualized learning modes were…