The Effect of Examiners’ Personal Familiarity and Professional Experience on Handicapped Children’s Test Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether examiners' personal familiarity and professional experience with examinees affects handicapped children's test performance. Subjects were 22 handicapped preschoolers. Examiners were either experienced (N = 11) or inexperienced (N =11) with this group of children and with testing. Subjects were assigned randomly to one of the two examiner groups. Within examiner groups, children again were assigned randomly to two examiners, one to serve as a personally familiar tester and the other to function as a personally unfamiliar tester. Each examiner tested children in both personally familiar and unfamiliar conditions in a repeated measures crossover design. Results indicated that subjects performed more strongly when tested by personally familiar examiners regardless of testers' experience. Additional analyses suggested that (a) there was no difference between experienced and inexperienced testers' cognitive complexity or attitude toward the handicapped; and (b) both examiner groups described the handicapped relatively simplistically and negatively. This may partially explain the finding that professional experience was a poor proxy for personal familiarity. Implications for current testing practice are discussed.