COUNSELORS OFTEN ADMINISTER TESTS OF QUESTIONABLE VALIDITY. IN RELIABILITY STUDIES, EVERY PRECAUTION IS TAKEN TO STABILIZE THE STIMULUS SITUATION. IN ASSESSING VALIDITY, CONCERN CENTERS ON BEHAVIOR UNDER DIFFERENT STIMULUS CONDITIONS. CRONBACH'S THEORETICAL LIMIT FOR A VALIDITY COEFFICIENT OF A TEST IS THE SQUARE ROOT OF THE RELIABILITY…

DEFINING MUSICALITY AS THE ABILITY TO GRASP A MUSICAL IDEA IN ITS TOTALITY, THIS RESEARCH INVESTIGATED THE RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF MUSICAL PERFORMANCE (BOTH ORCHESTRAL AND CHORAL), GUIDED LISTENING, MUSIC READING, AND MUSICAL COMPOSITION AS MEANS OF DEVELOPING SUCH MUSICALITY. THE INSTRUMENT OF EVALUATION WAS A TEST OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENTS IN…

Before selecting an achievement test, it is essential to determine its purpose. There are eight purposes, relating to three educational decision making contexts: (1) instructional managerial (diagnosis, course placement, career guidance); (2) screening (selection and certification) and (3) programmatic (survey assessment, formative evaluation,…

A set of eight widely used inductive reasoning tests were investigated to determine whether or not they have different factorial structures. The eight inductive tests and three deductive tests, taken from the French Kit of Reference Tests for Cognitive Factors and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, were administered to 157 high school…

The relationship between children's performance on a standardized achievement battery and compositional writing performance was examined. One hundred thirty-eight writing samples were collected from fourth-grade students. Compositions were scored for both mechanistic and holistic qualities. Four subscores on the Metropolitan Achievement Test were…

Variability in diagnostic procedures and a lack of valid and reliable measures led to the development of a comprehensive battery, which incorporated an operational definition of learning disabilities. The battery consisted of forms for observing these functions: intelligence, academic achievement, gross and fine motor control, visual perception,…

The purpose of this first phase of a continuing research program was the development of a test of creative problem solving in general design. A design class of 186 members was divided into an experimental and control group; a non-design control group (an educational psychology class) of 45 was also tested. Multivariate interpretation of creative…

Generalizability theory extends previous methods of estimating the reliability of rating instruments such that one can estimate the precision of a measurement system for differentiating among students, scales, or any other important dimension. In this study, generalizability theory is applied to faculty ratings of junior and senior dental students…

A bilingual rating scale was constructed to determine teachers' ratings of attitude and proficiency among Anglo and Spanish children in Title VII classes. This instrument was designed to ascertain how teachers perceive the pupils in their classroom and how two teachers representing different backgrounds perceive children of similar and different…

A student's choice of an answer to a test question is a coarse measure of his knowledge about the subject matter of the question. Much finer measurement might be achieved if the student were asked to estimate, for each possible answer, the probability that it is the correct one. Such a procedure could yield two classes of benefits: (a) students…

A picture-board sociometric interview for preschool children is described and information on reliability and validity is presented. While the reliability of this measure of peer popularity is low to moderate using test-retest or split-half measures, the interview data does seem to predict other relevant measures of the social behavior of young…

The primary aim of this research project was to test the hypothesis that successful teacher- and parent-mediated direct modification, by operant techniques, of youngsters' deviant behavior would tend to be followed by significant positive changes in the youngsters' self-concepts. Two studies were done. In the first, focusing on teacher-mediated…

This paper reports the development of a Classroom Behavior Inventory and a series of studies which have developed and refined methods for collecting teacher ratings of children's social, emotional and task-oriented behavior from preschool through high school. Findings suggest that the Classroom Behavior Inventory is a relatively economical,…

Chicano and Amerindian vocabulary scale responses from the Stanford-Binet (LM) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children were item-analyzed for 1,009 subjects. The response patterns differed both by ethnic group and test, as well as by age. The most common, and recurring, pattern found was "level-of-difficulty" gradient…

In this paper, the author reviews a number of criticisms that have been made of the use of standardized tests in the social studies and reviews 11 general, skills, and discipline-oriented standardized tests for social studies. Standardized tests evaluating the results of the new social studies courses are open to criticism on the basis of…