This article reports on the development and validation of a rubric for assessing students' written responses to artworks. Since the implementation of the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary Curriculum in 2009, art educators have seen responding to artworks as increasingly important. In this context, the Art Criticism Assessment Rubric (ACAR) was…

Aims: This study aimed to (1) develop and validate the Chinese and English Handwriting Screening Test for Kindergarten Children (CHEST) to screen children for handwriting difficulties in their final year of kindergarten education in Hong Kong, and to (2) identify common types of problems encountered by those children before their formal primary…

Demand for second-language (L2) Chinese education for kindergarteners has grown rapidly, but little is known about these kindergarteners' L2 skills, with existing studies focusing on school-age populations and alphabetic languages. Accordingly, we developed a six-subtest Chinese character acquisition assessment to measure L2 kindergarteners'…

Assessment is the foundation for conceptualizing effective interventions. Due to their nonverbal nature, art therapy assessments have an advantage over traditional verbal assessments in some populations and potentially across cultures. This pilot study provides preliminary reliability data to support the cross-cultural use of the Formal Elements…

Resource Utilization Groups III (RUG-III) is a case-mix system developed in the United States for categorization of nursing home residents and the financing of residential care services. In Hong Kong, RUG-III is based on several board groups of residents. The aim of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the RUG-III in Hong Kong…

Background: This article reports a study into the double marking of Liberal Studies in Hong Kong. This is now a compulsory subject in Hong Kong's Years 10-12 curriculum which, when first examined in the new Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education in 2012, will increase its candidature from its current 3,300 to 80,000. Aims: To examine the…

Objectives: Most of the fine-motor assessment tools used in Hong Kong have been designed in Western countries, so there is a need to develop a standardized assessment which is relevant to the culture and daily living tasks of the local (that is, Chinese) population. This study aimed to (1) develop a fine-motor assessment tool (the Hong Kong…

Reliable perceptual judgement is important for documenting the severity of hypernasality, but high reliability can be difficult to obtain. This study investigated the effect of practice and feedback on intra-judge and inter-judge reliability of hypernasality judgements. The judges were 36 speech-language therapy students, who were randomly…

This paper describes a study comparing paper-based marking (PBM) and onscreen marking (OSM) in Hong Kong utilising English language essay scripts drawn from the live 2007 Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) Year 11 English Language Writing Paper. In the study, 30 raters from the 2007 HKCEE Writing Paper marked on paper 100…

This paper describes a study of the computer essay-scoring program BETSY. While the use of computers in rating written scripts has been criticised in some quarters for lacking transparency or lack of fit with how human raters rate written scripts, a number of essay rating programs are available commercially, many of which claim to offer comparable…

The authors compared business journal ranking systems from 6 countries. Results revealed a low degree of agreement among the systems, and a low to moderate relationship between pairs of systems. In addition, the French and United Kingdom ranking systems were different from each other and from the systems in Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, and the…

Background: Many speech and language therapists work in a multilingual environment, making cross-linguistic studies of speech disorders clinically and theoretically important. Aims: To investigate the effect of listeners' linguistic background on their perceptual ratings of hypernasality and the reliability of the ratings. Methods &…

Devises a nine-point scale for scoring drawings of a cube. Provides detailed criteria and examples for each category. Shows that interrater reliability of the scale is high, and scores trace a linear trend through a sample age-range. Suggests that the scale is suitable for use as a diagnostic or assessment tool. (DSK)

This article empirically validates an existing content analysis scheme and addresses a main concern of researchers about text-based, online transcripts in the form of code-recoding by mapping our scheme to the practical inquiry, cognitive presence model's five phases directly to realise higher-order thinking or critical thinking aspects for our…

The 13-item Chinese Creative Writing Scale was modified from the Carlson Originality Scale to assess creativity elements in compositions of primary school students (n=69) in Hong Kong. Content validity was endorsed by an expert panel and results show the scale has excellent interrater reliability and moderate to good internal consistency.…