Thomas M. Goolsby

The Validity of a Comprehensive College Sophomore Test Battery for Use in Selection, Placement, and Advisement

IT has become increasingly important in the past decade to provide for comprehensive testing at the college sophomore level on several counts. First, it is going to be almost imperative that selection occur for students entering the upper division. Secondly, it is very important to advise and guide students into appropriate curriculums of study in the upper division. Thirdly, there is the matter of shaping the curriculum of the junior college and the lower division of other institutions of higher learning. At the present time there is no single test, battery of tests, or total testing program to provide adequate information for intelligent decision-making to meet any of the needs alluded to above. It has been the experience of the admissions personnel and academic advisers that there is a dearth of adequate information for their needs. In most cases an estimate of success in school is based

Law School Selection and Performance and Subsequent Admission to Legal Practice

more rigorous selection for admission to law schools has been necessary and desirable. At least one of the major problems in the selection process has been identifying and using an adequate predictor of success in law school. Partly because of the unavailability of a choice of a predictor, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) published by Educational Testing Service has been used almost exclusively as a comprehensive test for use in the selection process. Performance criteria of success in law school have traditionally been and continued to be grades in formal course work. Researchers

Training Non-Readers in “Listening Achievement”

The major purpose of this study was to determine whether listening experience for children resulted in improved ability to recognize information heard. Subjects were five-year-old children randomly selected from five kindergartens of an average population and randomly assigned to three groups. Between pretests and posttests different amounts and kinds of training in listening were applied for each of the three groups. Resulting data indicated that different treatments did not make for a difference in performance. Comparison with data of another study by the author, in which the subjects were culturally deprived children, indicated that immediate feedback seemed to produce comparable levels of listening achievement regardless of whether the subjects are culturally deprived or of the general population. No feedback to culturally deprived Head Start subjects resulted in their significantly lower listening achievement level.

Effect of Massive Educational Intervention on Achievement of First Grade Students

Two hundred Gulfport, Mississippi, first grade students received the benefit of extensive and intensive treatments designed to enhance educational effect. Approximately half of these students were from definitely deprived backgrounds and many demonstrated a very low degree of readiness for first grade activities. Com parison classes following the established first grade curriculum were also monitored to provide a basis for comparison. Results strongly suggest that the experimental treatments resulted in higher achievement. More important than the direction of the observed differences are their magnitudes. Enhancement of achievement due to the experimental treatments appeared greatest for low readiness students by a wide margin.

Factorial Structure and Principal Correlates of the Florida Bar Examination

Sixteen of the tests were graded subjectively and are referred to as essay tests. Each essay test was assigned to a different committee for grading, and each grader was required to check for coverage of each legal point specified by the question writer. A specific number of points was assigned to each area of coverage, and grades were determined accordingly. The four remaining tests were objective, containing 30 or 40 items, each with three to five distractors. No negative discrimination index was noted for any of the 140 items on these tests, and most of the difficulty indices were in the range .2 to .9. Almost all the distractors functioned.

Comparability and Validity of Three Forms of Scat

THE School and College Ability Tests (SCAT) have been widely used at all grade levels. Statements concerning validity of the various forms of SCAT seem to be limited and vary in the literature published by the authors of the tests. The most frequently noted statement is that ‘‘the forms were designed to aid in estimating the capacity of a student to undertake the next higher level of schooling.” The present study was designed (1) t o determine the comparability of two forms of SCAT at Level 1 (Form 1C and Form 1D) as well as of a third form specifically constructed for inclusion in an achievement test battery and (2) to determine certain validity coefficients when some major criterion variables are considered. Procedures. Form 1C or Form 1D was administered to entering freshmen a t a large Southeastern University in September, 1966. Alternate 8s in each testing room responded to the items in Form 1C or Form 1D. Other data collected were Florida Twelfth Grade Achievement Tests (FTGAT) scores in the Fall of 1966 (which included as a subtest a specially-designed form of the SCAT prepared by the Educational Testing Service) and Freshman Grade Point Average (FGPA) in January, 1967. I n addition to the determination of means and standard deviations for comparative purposes, intercorrelations were calculated to determine certain measurement characteristics of SCAT and FTGAT and to ascertain the utility of SCAT as a predictor of certain criteria and as a correlate with certain variables, including Freshmen Grade Point Average (FGPA) .