Presents guidelines for constructing tests which accurately measure a student's cognitive skills and performance in a particular course. The advantages and disadvantages of two types of test items are listed (selected response and constructed response items). Both poor and good examples are given and general rules for test item writing are…

Translation and cultural adaptation of rating scales are two critical components in testing culturally and/or linguistically heterogeneous populations. Despite the proper use of these scales, challenges typically arise from respondents' language, culture, ratiocination, and characteristics of measurement processes. This study investigated factors…

This study investigated the relationships among the symbolic representation of problems given to students to solve, the mental representations they use to solve the problems, and the accuracy of their solutions. Twenty eleventh-grade science students were asked to think aloud as they solved problems on the ideal gas laws. The problems were…

One way to minimize the test taking advantage that test-wise students have is to offer all students the opportunity to become test-wise through formal instruction in test taking. This paper describes the development and use of "Form Z," a test that can be used as a teaching aid or as a research instrument for test wiseness. The test was designed…

Literature on the development of classroom achievement tests for high school and college level hearing impaired students is reviewed, with emphasis on achievement tests designed to ascertain whether a particular unit of instruction has been understood as it was presented. The paper reviews: the syntactical structure and vocabulary of test items;…

The purpose of this study was to design a prototype written test of cognitive development based on the model of Piaget. Although the results were not consistent with Piaget's theory, test development was only partially successful. Specifically, validation of the scales was excellent or poor depending on the perspective. Analysis of the item…

The development of an objective diagnostic scale to measure atypical behavior is discussed. The Atypical Response Scale (ARS) is a structured projective test consisting of 17 items, each weighted 1, 2, or 3, that were tested for convergence and reliability. ARS may be individually or group administered in 10-15 minutes; hand scoring requires 90…

Three rating scales--with all positive or all negative wording, or a mixture of both--were administered to 522 children in grades four through six. The results indicated that it was difficult for students to indicate agreement by disagreeing with a negative statement. This affected test validity. Author/GDC)

This paper discusses the use of latent class structure as a modelling framework for tests in which much of the data conforms to a relatively small number of systematic patterns. Application of this framework to the analysis of tests has been limited because available parameter estimation algorithms can only handle a relatively small number of…

Procedures devised for computing factor matching statistics in questionnaire construction are described. In a study of the impact of vocational education on social, affective and nontechnical development of students, an attitude questionnaire to measure outcomes was developed. Each item in the final section had a six-point Likert type response…

This state of the art review discusses approaches to the measurement of theological concepts, and briefly describes the purpose and limitations of selected tests in the following areas: religious knowledge (mainly biblical knowledge); theological belief; religiosity--observable religious activity; religious experience--mystical experience; and…

Three paradigms for assessing children's vocabulary knowledge were evaluated in this study: synonym, synonym in context, and cloze. The vocabulary tests, a paper-and-pencil adaptation of the on-line tests used in two previous studies, were administered to 830 second through seventh grade students. Subjects performed similarly on the three formats…

A 40-item flexilevel test and a 40-item conventional test were compared using data obtained through (1) computer-administration of the two tests to three groups of college students, and (2) monte carlo simulation of test response patterns. Results indicated the flexilevel score distribution better reflected the underlying normal distribution of…

The use of computers in areas of testing, selection, and placement processes for those in military services' training programs are viewed in this paper. Also discussed is a review of the motivational and theoretical foundation of admissible probability testing, the role of the computer in admissible probability testing, and the authors' experience…

Several methodological problems (particularly the assumed bipolarity of scales, instructions regarding use of the midpoint, and concept-scale interaction) which may contribute to a lack of precision in the semantic differential technique were investigated. Results generally supported the use of the semantic differential. (Author/JKS)