Everett E. Davis

Current Validity of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities.

The manual for the McCarthy Scales of Childrens Abilities (MSCA) cites a study of concurrent validity. A partial replication of the study yielded lower means and larger standard deviations for fiv...

VALIDITY OF THE MCCARTHY SCALES FOR SOUTHWESTERN RURAL CHILDREN

Scores on the McCarthy Scales of Childrens Abilities were compared with scores on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities, and the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language for 49 kindergarten children about 5½ years of age. The majority of the children had been strongly influenced by the Spanish language and Mexican culture. Although the means for the tests were mostly low, intercorrelations with other tests and with previous results were satisfactory. It was concluded that these intercorrelations were evidence of the concurrent validity of the McCarthy scales.

Stability of the McCarthy scales over a 1‐year period

The McCarthy Scales of Childrens Abilities were used to retest 43 children in the first grade who had taken the test the year before. The children attended kindergarten and later first grade in a Texas farming community near the Mexican border. The children were from a mixed culture, and the mean score for the General Cognitive Index was about 10 points lower than the national norm. After an interval of approximately 1 year the test-retest correlations were in the.60s to. 80s; only the Motor ability scale had a low testretest correlation. The General Cognitive Index had acceptable stability.

The Study of Teaching by Michael J. Dunkin and Bruce Biddle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974. 490 pp

(1975). The Study of Teaching by Michael J. Dunkin and Bruce Biddle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974. 490 pp. The Educational Forum: Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 363-365.