The evaluation of guidance: listening to pupils' views

The increasing emphasis on school evaluation and improvement may encourage schools to pay greater attention to pupils' views of their schooling, including their experience of guidance or pastoral care. A study of pupils' experience of guidance in Scottish schools indicated that pupils have much to contribute to the evaluation process and highlights a number of implications for guidance or pastoral care.     

An Alternate Method for Content-Oriented Test Construction: An Empirical Evaluation

This study empirically evaluates the relationships between rationally and empirically estimated item indices used in the development of a test of land navigation knowledge for the US Marine Corps. Three land navigation instructors provided ratings on three item indices (item content validity ratios [CVRs], difficulty, and discrimination). These ratings were correlated with empirically derived item indices (difficulty, discrimination, and item-criterion correlations) obtained from the scores of 359 Marines on measures of land navigation knowledge, skill, and performance. Contrary to previous research, item CVRs were significantly correlated with all three empirically determined item indices. The increased effectiveness of rational item indices obtained in the present study over those from previous research appears to be related to the following areas: qualifications of expert raters, match of raters to the rating task, and the nature of the rating task. The implications for content-oriented test design and for judgmental test validation strategies are discussed.     

Categorization and normalization of vowels by 3-year-old children

A two-alternative, forced-choice procedure was used in two experiments to test 3-year-old children’s categorization of natural vowel tokens produced by several talkers. An appropriate pointing response (right or left) was visually reinforced with one of two television displays. In Experiment 1, the stimuli were isolated tokens of /a/ and /i/ produced by a male adult, a female adult, a male child, and a female child. In Experiment 2, the stimuli were isolated tokens of /æ/ and /∧/ produced by the same talkers. In both experiments, 3-year-olds spontaneously generalized their pointing responses from the male adult vowel tokens to the corresponding vowels produced by the other talkers. Children reinforced for an arbitrary grouping of the two vowel categories persisted in categorizing on the basis of vowel quality. Results from both experiments demonstrate the presence of perceptual constancy for vowel tokens across talkers. In particular, the results from Experiment 2 provide evidence for normalization of isolated, quasi-steady-state vowel tokens because the formant values for tokens of /∧/ produced by the woman and the two children were closer to the formant frequencies of the male adult’s /æ/ than to the male adult’s /∧/.     

Increased regional cerebral glucose metabolism and semantic memory performance in Alzheimer's disease: A pilot double blind transdermal nicotine positron emission tomography study

Nicotinic receptor dysfunction and impaired semantic memory occur early in Alzheimer's disease patients (AD). Previous research implied that nicotine's ability to enhance alertness, arousal, and cognition in a number of nonclinical populations was a function of its ability to stimulate CNS nicotinic cholinergic receptors. In this study it was hypothesized that transdermal administration of nicotine would increase both regional cerebral glucose metabolism (rCMRglc) and semantic memory (as assessed by verbal fluency). Two mild AD and two elderly controls underwent positron emission tomography scanning during a double blind nicotinic agonist verbal fluency challenge procedure. rCMRglc increases occurred in both AD patients, but not controls. In the two AD patients, verbal fluency scores increased by an average of 17%. One elderly control's verbal fluency increased, and the other decreased. These findings suggest that nicotine's effect on metabolism and verbal fluency is due to its ability to stimulate the cholinergic system.     

Effects of inadmissible Evidence on the Decisions of Simulated Jurors: A Moral Dilemma

In a 2 × 3 design, simulated jurors received either weak or strong evidence against a defendant in a murder case. Within each evidence condition, subjects were given either additional evidence ruled admissible, additional evidence ruled inadmissible, or no additional evidence. Results indicated that ( a ) jurors were biased by inadmissible evidcnce in the weak-evidence but not in the strong-evidence condition, ( b ) strong evidence resulted in more guilty verdicts than did weak evidence, ( c ) confidence in verdict was influenced by strength of evidence, and ( d ) confidence of guilt was positively correlated with severity of punishment. Implications of the results are discussed within the context of the judicial process.     

Correlates of female athletic participation: Masculinity,femininity, self-esteem,and attitudes toward women

Self-esteem, psychological masculinity and femininity, and attitudes toward women in female athletes were investigated in an attempt to examine the validity of various stereotypes. Subgroup distinctions based on sport played, level of commitment to athletics, and experience level were also examined. Seventy-one women participating in intercollegiate varsity teams (crew, basketball, squash, and swimming) at a major university in the Northeast were compared with an unselected group of 185 women from the same university. In contrast to previous findings, female athletes were found to be significantly less feminine than their college peers, but not more masculine. In sport-by-sport comparisons, differences were not found. Highly committed athletes were found to be more masculine and more feminine, as well as more profeminist, than low commitment athletes; and experienced athletes also appeared to be the more highly committed ones. Self-esteem and commitment were found to be unrelated, suggesting that the individual can make a strong commitment to athletics without it having an evaluative component. Speculations were made about the athlete of the future and the influence of athletics on self-esteem.     

Encoding strategy and sensory and semantic interference

Studies were designed to compare the effects of encoding strategies on two types of interference, sensory and semantic. Paired-associate lists were learned under instructional sets encouraging interactive imagery or repetitious rehearsal. Sensory interference was created by mispairing rhymes and semantic interference was produced by mispairing associatively related words. In control lists word pairs were unrelated. The results indicated that encoding strategy did not influence amounts of sensory and semantic interference. Mispairing rhymes produced the same amount of confusion as mispairing associates whether pairs were encoded through interaction imagery or through repetitious rehearsal. These effects were found with both short and long encoding intervals. The findings are inconsistent with the idea that encoding operations or strategies applied to word pairs completely determine the type of code activated for those pairs. Both sensory and semantic codes appear to be activated under each kind of encoding strategy.     

Religiosity and Cancer Screening

Churches have been suggested as avenues to reach African-American populations with messages about health because of their strong participation in church activities. Membership in several religious denominations has been associated with healthy lifestyle practices that are associated with lower cancer-incidence rates and better coping strategies among cancer patients. Among African-American women, however, belief in God as their doctor might preempt seeking treatment for cancer. The goal of the present study was to examine the influence of church participation and religious beliefs on the utilization of breast and cervical cancer screening among low-income, predominantly African-American women. A cohort consisting of 290 women was surveyed at baseline and one year later to determine the association between screening rates in the past year and measures of religiosity. The majority of women were members of a church (88%), with fairly regular church attendance (51% reported weekly attendance), and strong beliefs regarding God's influence on their health (e.g. 88% agreed that God was their doctor). Church attendance was the only religious variable related to screening frequency in univariate analyses, with those reporting attending church 1–3 times per month more likely to receive mammography screening (p = .013). Churches can provide avenues to reach African-American women about cancer screening; strong religious beliefs do not, however, appear to keep women from receiving regular screening exams.     

MacPotthoff: automated calculation of the Potthoff regression bias procedure

Test bias, in contrast to test fairness, is best conceptualized in validity terms amenable to statistical analysis. Evidence of predictive validity may be most salient in many situations. Evaluation of predictive bias is generally operationalized via linear regression. Potthoff (1978) provided an efficient and parsimonious regression bias procedure that allows both simultaneous and separate tests of regression slopes and intercepts across groups. A Macintosh computer program, MacPotthoff, is presented for automated calculation of Potthoff regression bias statistics.