Jack C. Merwin

Homogeneity Within Item Forms in Domain Referenced Testing.

IN recent years, criterion-referenced testing has gained considerable attention as an alternative to norm-referenced testing. This is particularly true in &dquo;mastery&dquo; testing where one is interested in gathering information to allow decisions regarding achievement of a defined level of competence, or more generally in the evaluation of instruction. Popham and Husek (1969) have suggested that there are two general kinds of criterion-referenced tests. The first, by far the more common, is composed of items sampled from a population of items which constitute a criterion but for which scores do not

Evaluation: A Profession?

The time is rapidly passing when the reformer can praise his new devices and offer as the reason for his satisfaction, his personal observation of what was accomplished. The superintendent who reports to his board on the basis of mere opinion is rapidly becoming a relic of an earlier and unscientific age. There are indications that even the principals of elementary schools are beginning to study their schools by exact methods and are basing their supervision on the results of their measurements of what teachers accomplish.

Perception and Reasoning Abilities among American, Japanese, and Chinese Adolescents

This study was designed (a) to examine whether female and male adolescents in the United States, Japan, and China differ significantly in their scores on measures of perception and reasoning, and (b) to determine whether there are similar factor structures of perception and reasoning aptitudes among these groups. A multiple aptitude test battery consisting of six tests (three designed to measure perception and three to measure reasoning) was administered to 854 eighth- and ninth-grade students from the three nations. Analysis of variance and confirmatory factor analysis of factorial invariance models were conducted to explore similarities and differences in means andfactor structures based on country and gender. Although some differences in the mean performance of adolescents from the three nations were noted on perception and reasoning tasks, there was remarkable similarity in the factorial composition ofperformance underlying tests ofperception and reasoning ability. The obtained findings are discussed in light of gender and cultural differences of adolescents from three countries.

The Effectiveness of Variables for Predicting Academic Achievement for Business Students

A PREVIOUS study by Watley and Martin (2) in vestigated the effectiveness of a large number of in tellectual and nonintellectual variables for predict ing academic achievement for male freshmen in a college of business administration. Five predictors were identified as the best combination of variables for this purpose. These were the mathematics and verbal scores of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) of the College Entrance Examination Board, the Re straint and Thoughtfulness trait scores of the Gu il ford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey (GZTS), and high school rank (HSR). The multiple c o r r e la tion coefficient between these five predictor varia bles and the criterion (first-year grades) was .82. Cross-validation of these results produced a validity coefficient of .52. The identification of personality traits as useful predictors of achievement is unusual. The inclusion of these two GZTS variables did, however, increase significantly the size of the obtained multiple corre lation. The purpose of this study was to analyze these data further by a method presented by Merwin (1). This method studies the relationship between each of these five predictors and success as a freshman business student. Increasing concern with the use of cutting scores and expectancy tables in student selection suggested analysis of the results using this technique. Scholastic ally successful students (C av erage or better) were compared with unsuc ees sful students (less than C average) on the basis of these five variables.

An Attempt to Improve Prediction of College Success by Adjusting For High School Characteristics1

Studies reported periodically over the past fifty years have been concerned with the relationship between high school characteristics and college achievement. The findings of much of this research have been markedly inconsistent. Although Pittinger (1917) reported that graduates of large high schools obtained the best grades in college, other studies (Seyler, 1939; and Saupe, 1941) have obtained results favoring the graduates of small schools. More recently, Hoyt (1959) found a trend for students from smaller high schools to earn lower college grades when grades were adjusted for high school rank. Watley (1964) assessed the effects of type (public or private), location, and size of high school in relation to academic achievement in an engineering college and found that predictive efficiency was improved using predictions computed specifically for graduates of large public high schools located in urban areas and for graduates of private high schools. Major efforts have been made recently to improve predictive efficiency from scaling methods designed to adjust high school grades on the basis of grades earned in college and then in turn correcting college grades on the basis of high school grades. Bloom and Peters (1961) reported that by adjusting both high school and college grades for institutional variation they were able to increase the over-all correlation between school and college grades from about .50 to .77. For a sample of 23 high schools they found a median within-school correlation of .54 for unscaled high school and college grades, and with scaled grades this was raised to .77. For 13 colleges the median within-college correlation of .57 for unscaled school and college grades was raised to .68 for adjusted grades. Although these findings are important and deserve close attention, several aspects of the design of the study make the