This paper examines a number of issues surrounding the addition of a dimension of international comparisons to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The basic position of the paper is that adding an international dimension to NAEP is certainly possible, but some problems will need to be overcome. Non-issues are identified and…

This paper reviews the now massive general literature showing that psychological tests are fair to minorities. This literature shows that there is no single group validity, there is no differential validity, and tests overpredict rather than underpredict minority job performance. Further evidence in regard to blacks is introduced from 51…

The focus of this study was to assess the 17-year-olds' ability to read functional reading tasks and to provide change if and where needed. This was a project between the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin High Schools (MFHS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the area of reading. Two hundred fourteen 17-year-olds were randomly…

Dramatic accounts of adolescent turmoil may confuse psychopathology with normal development if derived from the study of clinical populations. To compare the development of normal adolescents, 108 students aged 17-22 from the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Western Samoa were studied. Results of three different personality measures…

This report presents the results of various standardized measures administered to Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP) students and control students in the school year 1975-1976. In contrast to previous comparisons, KEEP employed more rigorous procedures for the selection of the control students and for the conditions of test administration.…

To discover factors which contribute to a high response rate for questionnaire surveys, the preferences of 150 college teachers and teaching assistants were studied. Four different questionnaire formats using 34 common items were sent to the subjects: open-ended; Likert-type (five points, from "strong influence to return," to…

PREKINDERGARTENS IN 8 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL SYSTEMS WERE EVALUATED TO FIND OUT IF THE CHILDREN INVOLVED SHOWED INCREASED CAPACITY TO LEARN, AND IMPROVEMENT IN LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE SKILLS. 1010 DISADVANTAGED AND 225 NONDISADVANTAGED SUBJECTS WERE RANDOMLY ASSIGNED TO EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS AND PRE- AND POST-TESTED WITH THE STANFORD-BINET…

This report is the Proceedings of the third conference of its type. Included are 23 of the 25 papers presented at the conference, discussion of these papers by invited discussants, and symposium papers by a group of leaders in adaptive testing and latent trait test theory research and applications. The papers are organized into the following…

Performance in concrete and abstract tasks is examined systematically by varying the degree of abstractness of problem-solving and concept formation tasks. Four forms of a problem solving test were constructed. Each form of the test presented problem situations through four different modes: verbal stories, picture-book, color slides,…

This report compares several educational programs for non-English-speaking students in Toronto, Canada. The Main Street program, initiated in 1965, is a full-time program of "cultural immersion" for students 12 years of age and older. The Givens Public School presented a similar program at the same time within a regular school. This…

In samples of 1,005 adolescents and adults in Hong Kong and 281 adolescents and adults in London (England), Moral Development Test patterns conform to that predicted by L. Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development (1969), but the degree of association between the stages differed between cultures. (SLD)

The responses of 194 fifth graders to a questionnaire assessing causal attributions, academic expectancies, and self-evaluation of smartness varied as a function of whether the questionnaire was administered individually or in a group. Children expressed lower and less accurate predictions in the individual condition than in the group condition.…

Describes a method for assessing the quality of translations based on item response theory (IRT). Results from the IRT technique with French and Chinese versions of a scale measuring individualism-collectivism for samples of 250 U.S., 357 French, and 290 Chinese undergraduates show how several biased items are detected. (SLD)

Four studies involving 172 Australian children (133 males and 39 females) were conducted to investigate the usefulness of the British Ability Scales (BAS) as an alternative to the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). The BAS was found to be a suitable alternative to the WISC-R. (SLD)

The usefulness of latent class modeling in addressing several measurement issues is demonstrated via a study of 74 good and 74 poor readers in grades 5 and 6. Procedures were particularly useful for assessing the hierarchical relation among skills and for exploring issues related to item domains. (SLD)