Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment

A 25 item short form of the Behavioral Assessment System for Children (BASC) Teacher Rating Scale–Preschool (TRS-P) was developed by the BASC authors to serve as an emotional/behavioral indicator for an academic intervention study targeting preschool-aged students. The BASC screener is thought to fulfill a need for an abbreviated behavior rating scale for preschool-aged students that teacher’s can complete in a short amount of time. The purpose of the current study is to assess the psychometric properties of the BASC screener. Internal reliability analysis demonstrated remarkably high internal consistency for the screener. Long-term test-retest reliability was found to be acceptable. Furthermore, the construct validity of the screener was investigated using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis methods. Results showed that the screener measures three distinct constructs: Social Skills, Attention/Cognition, and Affect. Evidence of convergent/divergent and discriminant validity is provided.

This study investigated the reliability and validity of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions–Adult Form (BRIEF-A) when used with deaf college students. The BRIEF-A was administered to 176 deaf and 184 hearing students of whom 25 deaf students and 56 hearing students self-identified as having an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnoses. Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency reliabilities for the deaf participants ranged from .55 to .96, similar to the published BRIEF-A normative sample. Differential Item Function analysis revealed that only 3 of the 75 items showed evidence of item bias for deaf students. The participants with ADHD had significantly higher scores on all nine scales. Discriminant analysis revealed comparable sensitivity and specificity of the BRIEF-A for discriminating ADHD from non-ADHD individuals for deaf and hearing groups. Finally, the deaf and hearing ADHD groups exhibited score profiles across the nine BRIEF-A scales that followed the pattern of the BRIEF-A ADHD clinical sample profile. The results suggest that the BRIEF-A is a reliable, largely unbiased diagnostic tool for deaf college students, with comparable discriminant and predictive validity for ADHD.

New editions of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence and Memory scales are now available. Yet, given the significant changes in these new releases and the skepticism that has met them, independent evidence on their psychometric properties is much needed but currently lacking. We administered the WAIS-IV and the Older Adult version of the WMS-IV to 145 older adults. We examined how closely our data matched the normative sample by comparing our scaled scores with those of the publisher and by evaluating interrelations among subtests using confirmatory factor analysis. Not surprisingly, scaled scores from our sample were somewhat higher than those from the normative sample on some tests. Factor analysis on our sample provided support for a higher-order model of the WAIS-IV/WMS-IV Older Adults battery combined. In addition, allowing some subtests to load on more than one factor significantly improved model fit. The best fitting model for our sample was also the best for the normative sample. Overall, the data suggest that the factor analysis models generated from the normative samples for the new WAIS-IV and WMS-IV are reliable.

Math anxiety has been historically overlooked in samples of children. This may be due in part to the lack of appropriate tools to measure anxiety in young children. The current exploratory study reports on the development and examination of reliability, validity, and factor structure of a new tool to measure math anxiety in young children. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that the Children’s Anxiety in Math Scale is a reliable and valid measure to assess math anxiety in children as young as first grade.

The Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) is widely used in assessing students’ learning and study strategies at both university and high school levels. The present study developed a Chinese version of LASSI (LASSI-C) and then further investigated the reliability, factor structure, and validity of LASSI-C scores, using a sample of 612 university students from Hong Kong. Results confirm that the scores measured from LASSI-C generally revealed the expected 10 subscales and a 3-factor structure that was originally postulated in LASSI.

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of studies, also in the field of educational psychology, on values within the framework proposed by Schwartz, involving younger and younger respondents. A fresh impetus to studies on children’s values was given by the Picture-Based Value Survey for Children (PBVS-C), which was developed by Döring and her colleagues. This article presents the development and structural validation of the Polish version of the PBVS-C, which measures Schwartz’s four higher-order values self-transcendence, self-enhancement, openness to change, and conservation. A theory-based multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis performed in a sample of 910 children (aged 8-12 years) revealed a differentiated value structure that closely corresponds to Schwartz’s prototype. These findings are discussed in light of cross-cultural assessment in childhood.

The Brigance Comprehensive Inventory of Basic Skills–II (CIBS-II) is a diagnostic battery intended for children in grades 1st through 6th. The aim of this study was to test for item invariance, or differential item functioning (DIF), of the CIBS-II across sex in the standardization sample through the use of item response theory DIF detection methods. Specifically, we studied two subtests—Reading Vocabulary Comprehension and Listening Vocabulary Comprehension. Form A exhibited a smaller degree of DIF compared to Form B across the two subtests. Thus, we recommend that Form A be the form of choice for practitioners.