Tested predictive validity of stress-vulnerability model of suicide ideation and behavior. Undergraduates completed measures of social/emotional alienation, adaptive resources for living, and cognitive rigidity at beginning of semester. Measures of stress and cumulative negative life stress were obtained midterm. Found that combination of…

Evaluates self-efficacy as a predictor of counseling skills performance in a graduate counseling class (n=31). Self-efficacy was measured before, midway through, and at the end of a microcounseling skills training program. Although there was a wide distribution of self-efficacy reports, none of the estimates of grade were significantly positively…

Examined how coaching affects the predictive validity and fairness of scholastic aptitude tests. A coached (n=271) and uncoached (n=95) group were compared. Comparison revealed that although coaching enhanced scores on the Israeli Psychometric Entrance Test by about 25% of a standard deviation, it did not create a prediction bias or affect…

Evaluations of the risk of recurrent violence were conducted for 162 Canadian mentally disordered criminal defendants through the assembly of actuarial data, scores from special-to-purpose psychometric instruments, and scaled global predictions of dangerousness to others. Professional clinicians were not more accurate than nonclinical raters. (JPS)

H. Wainer and L. Steinberg (1992) showed that within broad categories of first-year college mathematics courses (e.g., calculus), men had substantially higher average scores on the mathematics section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT-M) than women who earned the same letter grade. However, Wainer and Steinberg's analysis may lead to…

The effectiveness of using the Perry Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development (PSIED) was assessed with vocationally undecided students. Erwin's 1981 Scale of Intellectual Development (SID) was administered to 290 vocationally undecided college students (131 males and 156 females ranging aged 17 to 42 years with a mean age of 20.2 years) at…

Structure mapping theory is a way of characterizing analogies and certain classes of metaphors. The central claim of this paper is that all analogies and many metaphors are fundamentally devices for mapping relational structures from one domain to another. This theory differs from other theories in postulating that the interpretation rules for…

University-level mathematics placement examinations might yield summary measures that are differentially accurate due to individual differences in the recall of previously-learned material. In particular, test scores in algebra and trigonometry may be subject to sporadic recall of solution procedures, resulting in aberrant response patterns. The…

This study explores the extent to which scores on four separate complex reasoning solution processes could predict performance on difficult problems. Definitions are provided for the four processes--intra-sentence processing, inter-sentence processing, ordering, and collecting--and previous work done in the field is outlined. The procedures used…

This report stems from the misunderstanding of what general standardized tests and standardized admission tests can and were designed to do, and an uneasiness with certain discoveries concerning biases in the tests. Important issues such as margin of error, predictive value, social and racial bias, and the effects of coaching are the very issues…

The purpose of this study was to determine the usefulness of 2 measures of student quality, high school percentile ranks and ACT composite standard scores, in predicting the first-year academic success of freshmen entering Wisconsin State University (WSU) at Stevens Point. The average high school percentile rank for the 2,172 entering freshmen in…

The relationships between grades of Hofstra students at the end of the freshman year and such predictor variables as high school standing and scores on the SAT are considered. Data are also presented on the overall performance of the class and on the relationship between performance of students who stayed at Hofstra and those who dropped out.…

The main objectives of this study were: (1) to determine the degree to which SAT scores and high school grades were effective in predicting the freshman grades of disadvantaged/minority students; (2) to examine the validity of these same predictor variables for subgroups of minority freshmen formed on the basis of sex, ethnic background and…

A factor analysis of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) battery was undertaken to gain a better understanding of the specific abilities which contribute to performance on the tests. To determine whether greater amounts of testing time should be allocated to groups of items defined by the factor analysis, a validity study was conducted. Existing…