"Balance" in the classroom has been the subject of recent debate in academic and public spheres, with some calling for legislation to prevent instructors from "indoctrinating" students. The debate over balance is important to sociology because the discipline is sometimes characterized as overtly liberal and activist; but the…

The problem of response set is important for questionnaire designers and interpreters, but the public is affected as well if policy is determined on the basis of unsupported conclusions. This study focused on one of the most researched response sets, extreme responding (ER), or extreme checking styles, and its relationship to one dimension of…

Presents evidence from a study of examination answer changes by students and from supporting literature to discredit the idea that first impression answers on objective tests are dependable enough that subsequent changes more often result in lower scores than in higher scores. (JT)

Basic mathemagenic concepts were tested under instructional conditions. Research areas of interest were the effect of two different types of adjunct questions and adjunct question positions on problem solving ability on prose materials. (Author/DEP)

Undergraduate students were interviewed to determine their identity states. A distinctive interpersonal style, both toward peers and toward authority was associated with each identity status. Results of these findings for a theory of identity development are discussed. (Author/DEP)

Twenty-two subjects were asked to generate fifty numbers from 0 to 100 at ten second intervals. These subjects were then taught to imagine a pleasant scene or an aversive scene on cue from the experimenter. After practice imagining these scenes, subjects were again requested to give fifty numbers between 0 and 100. Group I was cued to imagine the…

Seven undergraduate volunteers studied a written passage on Atomic Structure and then, while answering a set of 24 multiple-choice items, talked aloud about the strategies they were using for option selection. The tape recordings of their verbal responses were analyzed for latency, memory references, and inference references. The items testing…

Different forms of a vocabulary test were administered to college students. Results indicated that as the frequency of specific determiners increased, they formed increasingly strong but differential guessing response sets in high and low scoring groups; however, the magnitude of the effect was much stronger for position specific determiners.…

One hundred and twenty-eight subjects responded to one of four differently labeled five-point Likert-type response scales. Although no significant differences in test means and in reliability estimates were found among response scales, the scales did differ on measures of variability. (Author/LMO)

Female college students were selected on the basis of their scores on the Manifest Anxiety Scale. The subjects worked either alone or in pairs. The experiment had a two x two x two design, with group type (nominal versus real), manifest anxiety (low versus high), and induces stress (low versus high) as the three variables. (Author)

Study was designed to determine whether certain commercial 10-item multiple-choice reading comprehension tests were vulnerable to guessing. It was concluded that more valid comprehension tests could be developed if items were tested for guessability. (Author)

Evaluated techniques for identifying faking on the Personality Inventory for Children (PIC). Undergraduate students (N=70) completed PICs on their child either faking bad, faking good, or legitimate. Results were cross-validated against a clinical sample. Results indicated a clinician cannot be certain a PIC profile is valid. (JAC)

Examines relative merits of the "forced-choice" mode of response v the "undecided" or the "don't know" response categories. Observations are "spin-off" of a larger research project to be reported soon. Authors invite reader reaction to their conclusion that "forced choice" is less effective than…

At intervals during the reading of an article, college students were asked to stop and state how they were preparing to answer an unspecified question about the article. Those students who had attempted to discern the question had significantly superior performance to those who had not devised such a strategy. (JN)

Examined user reaction to computer-administered and paper-and-pencil-administered forms of the Strong Interest Inventory. Results indicate that user reactions to the two administration modes were reasonably similar in most areas. However, the computer group indicated more often that their version was easier to use and follow. (RJM)