Order Description

Answer these questions in word form.

Chapter 1

1. When and in what country was systematic measurement introduced?
2. When did formal measurement first appear in the West?
3. What two individuals are credited with developing the correlation coefficient?
4. List the three types of decisions that led to increased interest in human differences.
5. What event heralded the beginning of the modern era in behavioral measurement?
6. What was Binet’s most important contribution to measurement?
7. What were E.L. Thorndike and his students endeavoring to do at the same time that
Binet was developing the Binet-Simon test?
8. List six periods in the twentieth century, into which mental testing can be divided.
9. What was the major contribution of each of the following pioneers in testing?
a. Lewis Terman
b. Arthur Otis
c. S.D. Porteus
d. Charles Spearman
e. E.K. Strong
f. L.L. Thurstone
10. How did U.S. involvement in World War I spur the advance of testing technology
11. For what two purposes are selection decisions most likely to be made?
12. In addition to facts, what consideration is important in making decisions?
13. What are the three steps common to all measurement?
14. What are the advantages of attaching numbers to behaviors?
15. What aspect of assessment tends to cause the most problems in the assessment of minority students?
16. What factor is of primary importance in determining what constitutes an invasion of privacy?
17. What type of comparison is involved when the performance of one person is compared to the average performance of a group?

Chapter 2

1. How are descriptive and inferential statistics different?
2. What is the name we give to a table that indicates how many times each score has
occurred?
3. How can the frequency distribution be improved in order to make the presentation
more concise?
4. How many categories should be used in a grouped frequency distribution?
5. Explain how to determine the mode, median, mean?
6. What is the purpose of measures of variability?
7. What are three methods of determining variability?
8. What is the standard deviation? (Formula?)
9. What is the relationship between the standard deviation and the variance?
10. What is the relationship between the normal curve and the standard deviation?
11. What is the purpose of scatter plots?
12. What two types of information does the correlation coefficient
provide?
13. Complete item #7 on page 65 of the text.

Chapter 3

1. What is the most important factor in interpreting a test score?
2. What are the three dimensions of the frame of reference of measurement?
3. Explain the difference between a norm and criterion-referenced test.
4. What are the three characteristics of an ideal scale?
5. What is a grade norm?
6. With what type of subject matter are grade equivalent norms most appropriately used?
7. Under what circumstances should age norms be used?
8. How are z-scores computed?
9. When a teacher makes a decision about what grade to assign to a student, he or she is
engaged in:
A. a process evaluation.
B. a formative evaluation.
C. a summative evaluation.
D. a qualitative evaluation.
E. a value judgment.

10. A grade equivalent of 6.0 in math for a 4th grader means the student can do:
A. 6th grade math.
B. some 6th grade but mostly 4th grade math.
C. 4th grade math as well as a 6th grade child can do 4th grade math.
D. no 4th grade math.
E. as well as 6 percent of 4th graders.

11. A distribution of Z-scores has a mean of ___________ and a standard deviation of ___________.
12. The mean of a test is 38. You get a 44 and learn that is equivalent to a T score of 65.
What is the standard deviation of the test?
13.Complete item #2 on page 115 of the text.

Chapter 4
1. How are reliability and validity related?
2. What are the three sources of inconsistency between measurements?
3. What are the three ways to determine reliability?
4. List three sources of variation in performance that tend to reduce the stability of a score.
5. What method of determining reliability measures all three of the sources of inconsistency?
6. What is the standard error of measurement and how is it computed?
7. What four factors affect reliability?
8. How do criterion-referenced and norm-referenced tests differ in terms of item difficulty?
9. A test designed to measure introversion proved to have high internal consistency, but the test was very minimally related to measures of introversion. This test, therefore can be considered:
A. Valid and reliable.
B. Valid but not reliable.
C. Reliable but not valid.
D. Neither reliable nor valid.
10. A company administers a keyboarding test to prospective candidates for a secretarial position.