THESE ARTICLES ARE WRITTEN TO GIVEN ESSENTIAL FACTS ON TESTING TO INTERESTED CITIZENS. THE IMPORTANCE OF TESTING LIES IN ITS VALUE AS A GUIDANCE TOOL. TESTS REPRESENT ONLY A SAMPLING OF A PERSON'S PERFORMANCE FROM WHICH GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS ARE INFERRED. THERE ARE NUMEROUS TYPES OF TESTS DESIGNED FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES, MEASUREMENT IN SOME IS…

THE FEASIBILITY OF USING AN ITEM-ANALYSIS APPROACH FOR THE EVALUATION OF AN INNOVATIVE NINTH-GRADE CURRICULUM WAS EXPLORED. A POOL OF TEST ITEMS WAS DEVELOPED, FOR EACH OF THE THREE UNITS TO BE EVALUATED, BY EXAMINING ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS AND TEACHER'S GUIDES, AND BY WRITING ITEMS THAT REPRESENTED THE MAJOR OUTCOMES EXPECTED OF EACH OF THE…

Generally speaking, the main purposes of second language tests are survey; didactic, psychological or sociological research; and evaluation, the latter being the concern of this paper. Evaluation tests measure the knowledge the learner has of the second or foreign languages, and may be subdivided into the following categories: (1) aptitude tests,…

Before selecting any measurement instrument the test user should always determine what it is he wants to know. A new instrument, The Assessment of Career Development (ACD), attempts to assess students' knowledge about jobs. One must, however, determine whether the content of the ACD is similar to the content of the career information system the…

In choosing between criterion-referenced and norm-referenced measurement strategy we should consider the nature of the decisions to be based on the resulting scores. If the decision involves selecting some fixed quota from the high (or low) end of an available competence continuum, then norm-referenced measurement is indicated. If, however, the…

Because of the increasing use of color in instructional materials at the level of the primary grades, the Health Service Department of the Denver Public Schools became interested in investigating the color vision of 5- and 6-year-olds. A project was established to create color-vision testing methods and to use those methods to ascertain incidence…

Recommendations are made for building an effective corrective or remedial reading improvement program into the structure of the developmental reading program. An outline of suggestions concerning objectives and goals, personnel, physical facilities, pupil selection, materials, and instruction is given. Samples of interest inventories and…

The recommended procedure for achievement test selection is presented. Following a review of some fundamental definitions of statistical properties of achievement tests (validity, reliability, and norms), major considerations to be applied in selecting achievement tests are discussed. These considerations are: (1) the characteristics of the school…

The nationwide sales force (N=540) of a large food and beverage firm responded to a mail survey designed to investigate the role of value orientation as a moderator of the relationship between organizational rewards and job satisfaction. Of the two main elements in the investigation, the first was concerned with the predictive efficiency of two…

Using the Kuder E General Interest Survey plus the Verification (V) scale as an index of reliability, the Choctaw Career Education Program (Mississippi) found that the results were increasingly unreliable with each decending grade level (7-12). (JC)

The author proposes a substitute for demonstrating the validity of employment tests, based on his study of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and federal executive agency guidelines and of court decisions relating to personnel selection. He states that test validation is still best but may not be necessary if steps are taken to avoid adverse…

Defines educational importance, multidimensionality, and economy to be essential criteria in the selection of attitude scales for curriculum evaluation. Five scales meeting the requirements are selected and tested with 1,158 Australian seventh-grade students. Scores on the attitude scales and correlations of scores with socioeconomic status,…

A survey of the current status of 25 reading readiness tests provides a summary of tests devised or updated over the last 10 years as reviewed in O.K. Buros "The Seventh Mental Measurements Yearbook" (1972), and a review of another six tests which have appeared since 1972. (IM)

Although authors have varied opinions, it is the general concensus that the WISC-R is superior to the WISC. This author concurs. However, serious consideration should be given to the research findings before the WISC-R is substituted freely for the WISC as a criterion for special education placement. (Author)

This study compared the three scales of the WISC and the WISC-R for degree of intercorrelation. Results included significant correlations in all cases, no systematic changes in variance, and significantly lower IQs on the WISC-R for all children in the sample, except the EMRs. (Author)