The effect of stimulus person valence on divergent self-other attributions for success and failure

Two experiments investigated self-other attributions for success and failure. In Experiment 1, high and low achievers completed a modified IAR scale either for themselves or another. Regardless of achievement motives, more personal attribution for failure was assigned to oneself than to a neutral other. In Experiment 2, additional scales for liked and disliked others were administered and scale item importance was varied. On global and individual causal measures, neutral and liked others were credited more and disliked others less for success than oneself, and liked others were blamed less and disliked others more for failure than oneself and neutral others. Item importance produced few effects. Results were interpreted in terms of informational considerations in self-other attribution.     

A theoretical study of two-stage testing

When items cannot be answered correctly by guessing, certain two-stage testing procedures are about as effective over the ability range of interest as the “best” up-and-down procedures studied previously. When answers can be guessed correctly 20 percent of the time, no two-stage procedure is found to match the “best” up-and-down procedures over this ability range. Feet-on-the-desk designs for two-stage procedures may produce poor results. This work was supported in part by contract N-00014-69-C-0017, project designation NR 150-303, between the Office of Naval Research and Educational Testing Service. Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government.     

Item characteristic curves estimated without knowledge of their mathematical form—a confrontation of Birnbaum's logistic model

Item characteristic curves are estimated without restrictive assumptions about their mathematical form. The resulting curves are compared with estimates obtained under the assumption that all curves are of logistic form. Surprising agreement is found between the curves obtained by the two unrelated methods.This work was supported in part by contract Nonr-2752(00) between the Office of Naval Research and Educational Testing Service. Reproduction, translation, use and disposal in whole or in part by or for the United States Government is permitted.     

Teachers'' knowledge of school psychologists'' responsibilities

The amount of time devoted to seven professional activities by 15 school psychologists during a six-week period was compared with the perceived involvement in these activities of teachers who varied in psychologist contact (high vs. low). Teachers were found to be unware of the service priorities of psychologists in their schools and were found to hold inconsistent attitudes regarding activity involvement. Teachers saw psychologists as doing more interviewing, teacher consultation, and counseling, and less testing and report writing than was evidenced by psychologists' records. Degree of psychologist contact did not uniformly influence teachers' perceptual accuracy. Implications of these findings for the interpretation of prior and the conduct of future studies of teachers' perceptions of school psychologists are discussed.     

A significance test for the hypothesis that two variables measure the same trait except for errors of measurement

The likelihood-ratio significance test is derived for the hypothesis that after correction for attenuation two variables have a perfect correlation in the population from which the sample is drawn.The writer is indebted to Professor John W. Tukey for his valuable suggestions on an earlier draft.     

An application of confidence intervals and of maximum likelihood to the estimation of an examinee's ability

A mathematical definition of the theoretical relation between the examinee's actual responses to the test items and his “true ability” is selected. A maximum-likelihood solution is obtained for estimating the examinee's “true ability” from his responses to the items. The standard error of the maximum-likelihood estimate is obtained, its relation to the discriminating power of the test is pointed out, and some generalizations are drawn as to the optimum level of item difficulty. The Neyman-Pearson power function is applied to determine which of two psychological tests is the most powerful for the selection of “successful” examinees.     

Some relations between guttman's principal components of scale analysis and other psychometric theory

Guttman's principal components for the weighting system are the item scoring weights that maximize the generalized Kuder-Richardson reliability coefficient. The principal component for any item is effectively the same as the factor loading of the item divided by the item standard deviation, the factor loadings being obtained from an ordinary factor analysis of the item intercorrelation matrix.     

A strong true-score theory,with applications

A “strong” mathematical model for the relation between observed scores and true scores is developed. This model can be used

1. 1.
   To estimate the frequency distribution of observed scores that will result when a given test is lengthened.     

A note on the normal ogive or logistic curve in item analysis

It is common to assume that the proportion of correct answers to an item has a normal-ogive or logistic relationship to total test score. However, this is shown to be a mistaken and an undesirable notion.