Norman M. Chansky

Improvement of Reading in College

COURSES IN the improvement of reading have been found not only to im prove reading behavior but academic performance as well. Since improvement is differential, the writers explored variables which have been shown to contrib ute to the variability in the improvement of performance. Three types of vari ables were studies: personality, intelligence and attitude. Deese and others (4) found anxious people to learn better under stress when the stress is such that it can be avoided by learning. Since there was a high correlation between anxiety and psychasthenia (+. 812) and a low correlation be tween anxiety and hysteria (+. 122), the writers suggested that hysterics would be expected to show impairment in performance while psychasthenics show im provement. Brown and Holzman (2) have suggested that study habits and atti tudes are related to academic success. Super (6) has shown that verbal intelli gence scores have a high correlation with reading performance. It is because of these findings that the three types of variables were chosen. The senior author teaches the Improvement of Reading Course at Adelphi College. Although the course is recommended to some students, registration in the course is voluntary. At the beginning of the course the American Coun cil on Education Psychological Test: L(l) is administered to provide a measure of verbal intelligence. The Brown-Holzman Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (2) is administered to assess those characteristics which the students have in common with academically successful students. The Minnesota M ultiphasic Personality Inventory (5) is used to screen students with personality problems. Reading ability is measured by the Cooperative English Tests C2 (3). At the end of the course a second measure of reading ability is obtained. The present study was concerned with whether improvement of vocabulary and of reading comprehension could be predicted from scores on the ACE Lan guage test, from the Brown-Holzman SSHA and from the hysteria andpsy c has thenia scores of the MMPI. Improvement in reading behavior was measured by the difference in performance in the preand post-Cooperative English tests. To facilitate comparisons, the scores on all tests were converted into stand ard scores.

THREAT, ANXIETY, AND READING BEHAVIOR

A RAPPROCHEMENT between learning in a laboratory setting and learning in a classroom setting is rarely accomplished because the content and context of the two learnings are not identical. Yet, theoretically, one might expect that the principles derived in the laboratory are actuated in the classroom. Classroom experiments, however, differ from laboratory procedures in that they lack the refinement of its instruments.

The Moderator Effect of Undergraduate Grade Point Average on the Prediction of Success in Graduate Education.

Three hundred and six Masters of Education students at a large urban university were divided into six subgroups according to sex and to each of three levels of undergraduate grade point average. Correlation coefficients between graduate grade point average and each of three predictor variables, consisting of Graduate Record Examinations—Verbal score, Graduate Record Examination— Quantitative score, and undergraduate grade point average, were calculated for each of the six subgroups. Results showed differential predictability across the different subgroups.

Identifying the First Grade Underachiever

AbstractFour methods of judging achievement relative to ability were investigated: (1.) Achievement and ability T scores within on standard deviation of each other, (2) Achievement T score subtracted from ability T score ratios, (3.) Regression of achievement on ability, and (4.) Teacher judgement as to the juxtaposition of achievement and ability. The Metropolitan Achievement Test (Primary I) and the Kuhlman-Anderson Intelligence Test, (A), were administered to 157 first graders. One hundred of these were chosen at random as a criterion group. Means, standard deviations, and regression equations were computed separately for boys and girls. The scores of the remaining fifty-seven were transformed using these estimates of the parameters. The number of overachievers, adequate-achievers, and underachievers identified by each of the four definitions differed significantly.

Elementary School Teachers Rate Report Cards

A CHALLENGING but foreboding task for the teacher is informing a parent of the progress his child is making in school. A wide variety of judg ments about a students achievement may be held by a teacher, but she must confine her evaluations to the reporting framework adopted by the school. School policy not only determines the areas of stu dent growth to be evaluated but the very terminol ogy to be used in reporting on student progress. The report card purports to channel to parents information about a childs progress in school. Yet few planned inquiries exist as to how effective this channel is. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether teachers believe that various ! reporting forms are equally effective in relaying functional information about the growth of elemen tary school children.

Factor analysis of two personality tests with differing conceptual frameworks.

The Cattell 16 PF, a nomothetic personality test, and the Runner Studies of Attitudes, an ideographic personality test, were administered in counterbalanced order to 122 graduate students in education. Intercorrelations among the subtests were computed and then factor analyzed. Six factors extracted were named anxiety, counter-dependence, extroversiveness, control, experimental attitude, and emotional independence. Though conceived in different psychometric frameworks, the two tests share common psychometric components.

Predicting Freshman GPA of Law/Justice Students

This study was concerned with the validity of the Verbal (V) and Mathematics (M) scales of the College Board Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) as predictors of college freshman grade point average (GPA) at Glassboro State College. A double cross validation was performed on data from 204 first-year law/justice students. Results indicated that SAT-V and SAT-M together were somewhat more valid predictors of GPA than was either score separately. Multiple Rs were .33 for the criterion group and .37 for the cross-validation group. Both SAT and GPA distributions were found to be skewed, the former positively and the latter negatively. This circumstance was a possible factor influencing the size of the correlation coefficients.

Factor Analysis of the Runner Studies of Attitude Patterns Interview Form (1970 Revision).

THE Runner Studies of Attitude Patterns, Interview Form (1970 Revision) [RSAP], developed and published by Runner (1970), is a recent addition to the assessment of the normal adult personality. &dquo;Attitude&dquo; is broadly defined to include personal needs, dispositions, preferences, and aims as well as the cognitive and affective reactions. RSAP consists of 121 dichotomously-scored items to which the respondent is instructed to express &dquo;... your feelings and preferences in your life situation as you perceive it [p. 1].&dquo; RSAP items sample a wide range of personal-social contexts. A respondent is to indicate for each item whether it does or does not reflect his own &dquo;attitude.&dquo; On the basis of practical experience with the original 100 items which had been developed and had been used in previous versions of the questionnaire (Runner and Runner, 1964) and a content analysis of additional ones, Runner (1967) has intuitively derived 14 scales using nonoverlapping combinations of items. All items are scored in the positive (&dquo;yes&dquo;) direction. Runner (1967, p. 2-3) has maintained that the 14 scales measure four basic orientations of &dquo;attitude&dquo; or philosophies of life called

Factor Structure of the Runner Studies of Attitude Patterns.

T H ~ Runner Studies of Attitude Patterns (RSAP) is a paper and pencil personality test developed within a phenomonological frame of reference. Its 14 scales measure four factors. Although trained users vouch for its predictive validity in industrial and educational settings, little is h o r n about the psychometric qualities of the RSAP (Runner, 1970). Baggaley, Isard, and Shermood (1970) found RSAP scores to differ in students enrolled in different curricula. Studying its concurrent validity, Aberman and Chansky (1970) found subtests of the Cattell 16PF to share variance with the RSAP, although the two instruments had arisen out of different clinical traditions. The purpose of this study was to determine the reproducibility of the RSAP factor structure in college samples. The four dimensions or orientations of the RSAP hypothesized by Runner in his manual mere CONTROL, FREEDOM, AFFILIATION and RECOGNITION. The CONTROL ORIENTED dimension includes four subtests: methods dependence, traditional righteousness, wariness of people and planful practicality; the FREEDOM ORIENTED factor, four subtests: intuitive introspectiveness, resistance to social pressure, pleasure in tool-skills, and active curiosity; the AFFILIATION ORIENTED dimension, four subtests: passive compliance, blamefulness, need for aff ectional acceptance, and feelings of pressure; and the RECOGNITION ORIENTATION; two subtests: competitiveness and dominant directiveness. Method. The 121 item RSAP was administered during Freshmen

Perception of Grade Intervals

Stone and Sinnett (1968) presented pairs of grade intervals to college professors to be judged using a paired-comparison technique. The question asked of them was which member of each pair was phenomenally larger. Twelve intervals between A and F were judged, including intervals such as C+ to B-. They found the log of the phenomenal scale values best fit the physical A, B, C, D, F scale. These scale values fitted Thurstones Case 111 rather rhan his Case V. Since pluses and minuses are not given in many colleges, would the same results be obtained using the conventional four-interval scale: AB, BC, CD, DF? The intent of this study was to investigate the relationship of the phenomenal to the physical grade scale in graduate students of educational psychology. Thirty-five graduate students in educational psychology were asked to judge which of each pair of grade intervals appeared larger. A = 4; B = 3; C = 2; D = 1; F = 0 anchors were given. All possible pairs were presented in such a manner as to minimize position effects. An alternate form of the task was presented 1 wk. later. Coefficients of consistence were computed for each S? The median coefficient was 1.00. Circular triads were infrequently noted. Analyses of variance of the frequencies of selecting each interval revealed an effect beyond the 5 per cent level (F = 19.21) of the physical grade (X) on the phenomenal ( Y ) . The trend was s~gniflcantly linear (F = 68.62). Tests for quadratic and cubic trends were also made. I: ratios were nonsignificant, 0.19 and 1.11, respectively. Adjusted z scale values were found to be AB = .000; BC = ,018; CD = .186; DF = .665. The Mosteller test was made to determine goodness of fit to Thurstone Case V. The nonsignificant x 2 was 0.02. The hypothesis of fit to Case V was accepted, there being equal discriminal dispersions for each interval. The absolute average discrepancy among the judges was .004, satisfactory for paired-comparison data. After 1 wk. Ss received an alternate form of the rask. The stability coefficient was 34 . Since both Ss and grade intervals differed from those in Stone and Sinneas study, the data are not comparable. The present study indicates that higher marks have smaller phenomenal distances between them. As the intervals increase from high ro low grades the phenomenal distances increase. The most frequently occurring pattern of choices was: ALSmal l e s t , BC-Larger, CD-Larger rhan BC, DF-Largest. Perhaps to graduate students failure marks are the apogee of the academic universe but the orbits associated with A, B, C are less distinguishable and close to the perigee. On the other hand, the size of DF may be artifactual. It is the only interval in which a letter (E) next in alphabetical position is missing.