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The purpose of the present study was to norm and validate the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) Introductory Calculus Subject Examination for two University of Illinois calculus courses, Math 120 and Math 135. It was of interest to determine if this examination could be used as a calculus placement and proficiency examination for new students who have a background of at least one semester of calculus, and who received high scores on the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) Advanced Mathematics Placement Test. CLEP Calculus scores did differentiate between students who performed at different grade levels within both Math 120 and Math 135. Validity and KR-21 reliability coefficients were quite high. A cutoff score based on the score at which no student received a D or E grade was recommended for granting proficiency for Math 120. Although a cutoff score was suggested for Math 135 proficiency, validity data for higher level calculus courses was recommended. (Author)

Described are the development of "Findings Kids with Special Needs" (FKSN), a instrument to identify children's learning problems and gifted students; results of field testing with 24,825 children, kindergarten through grade 8, in 110 schools; and validation procedures. Discussed is test construction, including incorporation of 12 criteria such as low use of teacher time, and 39 vignettes (developed by 19 special educators) which describe 18 subcategories of need that can be grouped into the 10 major handicapping areas. The following is an example of a vignette: "Jane can read material which is about five grade levels above her class, however, her handwriting is poor and she is about average-to-above in most other subjects". Results of field testing in five midwestern states are given to show that 6,448 children had one or more areas of special need, that there were a total of 10,351 combined special needs (9% were severe), and that 993 teachers spent a minimum of 25 and a maximum of 55 minutes per class checking vignettes against observed student behaviors. School personnel requests for confidentiality are said to have been honored in computer assisted development of a student profile, building profile, and a master list of students for local school use. Discussed are results of validation procedures such as studies involving 24 special school children and 2,151 regular class children which show that the FKSN accurately identifies school children with learning problems. The FKSN is recommended to fill the gap between children already referred and children in need of special services, and to free special education staff from psychometric duties for more support to regular class teachers. (MC)

The response to 20 attitudinal items on the University of New Mexico Educational Foundations "Education Scale" by 149 UNM students were used as the basis for a factor analysis. The analysis yielded five rotated factors. The factors were difficult to interpret and the analysis did not lend any support to the a priori grouping and judgements of educational concepts of the authors. Interpretations made by an educational philosopher provided a different perspective. What were thought to be attitudinal items were statements of philosophies. Apparently, while the authors were looking for surface relationships regarding educational concepts, deeply rooted philosophies were functioning. A recommendation for completely different use of the scale was made. A copy of the University of New Mexico Educational Foundations Education Scale is included in the Appendix. (Author)

Analysis of the relationship between the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and Stanford Binet (SB) test age and standard scores of mentally handicapped children of chronological ages 3, 4, 5, and 6 years indicated uniform underestimation of SB by the PPVT at the lower performance levels. Regression equations for determining SB from PPVT were calculated. (Author)

The purpose of this document was to present the development and validation of an instrument to be utilized by local inservice education coordinators in the evaluation of career education inservice training programs. It is proposed that the instrument, the Career Education Concept Inventory (CECI), can be used to provide a measure of understandings and attitudes held by professional education personnel as a means of determining benchmark information necessary for program planning. It is suggested that the CECI may also be used in a pre- and posttest design thereby providing a measure of individual or group change. This document outlines the purpose of the instrument and its development, both in preliminary and final forms, the data analysis used (sample characteristics, item analysis, reliability, validity), and gives directions for administration and scoring. The CECI questionnaire, a respondent information sheet, and relevant data tables are included. (KP)

Although the "Don't Know" (DK) option has received telling criticism in maximum performance summative tests, its potential use in formative evaluation was considered and judged to be more promising. The pretest of an instructional module was administered with DK options. Examinees were then required to answer each question to which they had responded DK. Concurrent validity of the resulting measures indicated superiority (p. less than .05) of the procedure using the DK option for one of the two criterion measures investigated. Results also revealed a need to teach students to use the option when it is used in formative evaluation. (Author)

A battery of tests, designed expressly for use in assessment of disadvantaged adolescents enrolled in youth-work training programs, was validated predictively against both short-term (program completion) and longer-term (post-program) behavioral outcome dimensions. Measures of the battery displayed their best validities with such longer-term criterion dimensions as Social and Vocational Adjustment, Job Success and Satisfaction and Job Search Motivation. The most valid tests were three Practical Reasoning measures (i.e., skill at following directions in job tasks); three Vocational Orientation measures (i.e., knowledge of job requirements and skill at seeking and holding jobs) and two attitudinal measures (Self-Esteem and Attitude Toward Authority). The most relevant short-term criteria were also identified and future potential of the test battery for programmatic evaluation and guidance applications was discussed. (Author)

During the past twenty years, the Law School Admission Test and seven other such tests have been used variously for selection, placement, and advisement of students seeking advanced degrees. The use of a single test for decision making has been proven inadequate, and in fact the test publishers caution against this practice. The use of test results with minority groups has been questioned insistently, and lacks valid evidence for fair use. Although the courts have been hearing litigation cases involving university policies for only ten years, there is an increasing tendency to examine academic decision with the prospects of accelerated review. This seems to be the results of several forces which involve the present trend to re-evaluate the role of higher education, civil rights protection, and student rights. This trend may reverse the prevailing majority position of universities in the record of court decisions. Individuals applying to professional programs should be able to submit any evidence which seems appropriate to them for consideration by the university, which in turn should require its own evidence. An analysis of all data should be made and included in a report for the faculty directly concerned. Several other procedures for the student's benefit should be undertaken. It has been estimated that such procedures could be implemented efficiently and at reasonable cost. (NE)

This report asserts that the evaluation of young children can be viewed as a classic case of evaluation of the culturally different. Emphasized is the fact that not only are the majority of tests developed with an adult's perspective concerning adequacy of directions, items, and formats, but also the evaluation of the products is carried out within the context of adult experience and imperfect memory. Selected research literature concerning factors influencing the evaluation of young children is reviewed. Some new data is presented, including a syntactic analysis of verbal directions for children's tests and an analysis of the difficulty of directions read by children on other instruments. The normative equivalents of change-level scores on a number of standardized measures of cognitive variables are examined. The evidence supports the original conceptualization of cultural bias. (Author/NE)

Investigated were the effects of two levels of penalty for incorrect responses on two dependent variables (a measure of risk-taking or confidence, based on nonsense items, and the number of response-attempts to legitimate items) for three treatment groups in a 2x3, multi-response repeated measures, multivariate ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) design. Subjects responded under one of three scoring-administrative rules: conventional Coombs-type directions and two variants suggested as mathematically more adequate. Results indicated significant differences both among groups and across conditions. The results were discussed with reference to the question of test validity in general, and the problems posed for criterion-referenced measurement. (Author)

The report summarizes research on the development of an objective scoring system and the formulation of scales useful in the assessment of psychological development and normal behavior using a five-card, orally administered and tape-recorded version of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The TAT language scales which were developed represent innovative measures of oral speech based on controlled samples of spontaneously produced speech and represent an important original contribution. The TAT language scales provide a basis for scoring verbal factors from actual samples of speech. National norms for children ages 6-11 are presented for these scales. Two studies are reported. In the first study, a major emphasis was placed on the development of usable scales, while in the second study, the major focus of the present report, involves cross validation and refinement of the scales, as well as provision of national norms for the scales. (Author/BB)

Recent efforts toward career education and the rise in occupationally oriented programs on the secondary and postsecondary level encourage a close examination of the nature of the relationship between people and their vocations. A 74 item device, the Vocational Commitment Index was developed to assess this relationship. Based upon a theoretically derived construct, the Index has demonstrated ability to discriminate among 123 subjects at four levels of career development in the hospitality industry. Evidence was secured of instrument reliability and validity. (Author)

The purposes of this study were to investigate (1) the consistency among fifth-grade children in conceptual style across different conceptual style instruments and (2) the generalizability of conceptual style behavior to school related tasks when stability and instability of children's conceptual style were taken into consideration. Children switching styles from one conceptual task to another performed significantly higher on five different school-related tasks than children using a consistent style across the conceptual tasks. The implications of these findings suggest that an individual's conceptual style as well as the nature of school-related tasks must be analyzed in relation to instructional materials and methods. (Author)

This study developed a semantic differential (SD) instrument to measure self-concept that was not influenced by social desirability. An alpha factor analysis of 53 SD scales produced five interpretable factors for the females and five interpretable factors for the males. A subsequent investigation of the convergent validity of each of the factors resulted in the confirmation of only the Evaluation and Potency factors for males and the Evaluation, Activity, and "Intellectual Ability" factors for females as valid measures of self-concept. The Evaluation dimension for females and the Potency dimension for males could be influenced by the social desirability factor; however, the extent of this influence upon the dimensions was not of sufficient magnitude to render them invalid measures of self-concept. (Author)

A potentially valuable measure of overconfidence on probabilistic multiple-choice tests was evaluated. The measure of overconfidence was based on probabilistic responses to nonsense items embedded in a vocabulary test. The test was administered under both confidence response and conventional choice response directions to 208 undergraduate educational psychology students. Measures of vocabulary knowledge based on confidence and choice responses, overconfidence, and risk-taking propensity were obtained. The results indicated that overconfidence was significantly related in a negative direction to probabilistic vocabulary scores. A moderate correlation was found between overconfidence and risk-taking propensity. However, the scatter plot for these measures showed that this relationship may have been spurious. (Author)

En-route Criterion Levels (ECLs) are defined as decision rules for predicting pupil readiness to advance through an instructional sequence. This study investigated the validity of present ELCs in an individualized mathematics program and tested procedures for empirically determining optimal ECLs. Retest scores and subsequent progress were validating criteria. Results indicated empirical data can identify more efficient ECLs than those established a priori. To justify the cost involved, however, such data should be collected by the instructional designers during the formative evaluation field test of a program, using automated data processing and multiple-matrix sampling techniques. (Author)

The differentiated outcome hypothesis posits that the maximum effects of an educational program are realized along those dimensions emphasized in the program or in those central to the persons involved. The idea that educational programs employing unconventional means should be examined on outcomes that are consistent with those means is derived from this hypothesis. In addition to knowledge acquisition outcomes, thinking and problem-solving, attitude and value, and behavioral change outcomes are recommended. Studies are cited that utilized outcome measures from the above classes and successfully demonstrated the differentiated merits of the programs involved. Relevant studies in progress are also reviewed. (Author)

Many self-concept measures employ several different scales to which the subject responds in a set order at one sitting. This study examined the effects of different testing conditions on such scales. Bill's Index of Adjustment and Values was administered to 191 graduate students under two different sequences, and two time delay conditions. The results indicate that performance on the real and ideal self scales was significantly affected by both sequence and time delay and by the interaction of these variables. No differences were found on the self-acceptance scale or the discrepancy scores. Implications for educational testing and research are discussed. (Author)

The intent of this study was to determine if any relationship existed between teacher effectiveness, based on selected criteria generally accepted by educators to denote effectiveness, and National Teacher Examination, Teaching Area Examinations (TAE) and Weighter Common Examination Total (WCET) scores. Teacher effectiveness was determined by the building principal's evaluation. Analysis of the data was accomplished by determining relationship through the correlation technique. It was found that a significant relationship (.05 level) does exist between the Teacher Area Examination of the NTE and secondary principal's evaluation. However, no significant relationship was found between elementary principal's evaluation and any of the NTE scores. (Author)

Recommendations and criticisms are made which might result in a more reliable assessment of the Puerto Rican child's intelligence as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). Many of these recommendations and criticisms involve typographical and grammatical errors, incorrect language usage, difficulty of item sequence and others. Further usage of the test should reveal to what extent these corrections will bring about a more valid assessment of the Puerto Rican child's general intellectual functioning. The discrepancy between the Puerto Rican and American WISC IQ's and standard deviation presents serious problems when interpreting Puerto Rican children's WISC IQ's and their subsequent classification. Included in the report is a table listing Puerto Rican IQ's (WISC) with their approximate converted American equivalents. These figures were extracted from normal curve tables, using the expected cumulative frequency distribution of the 128 cases included in the Puerto Rican sample. (RC)