The Predictive Validity of Student Self- Evaluations, Teachers' Assessments, and Grades for Performance on the Verbal Reasoning and Numerical Ability Scales of the Differential Aptitude Test for a Sample of Secondary School Students Attj7Ending Rural Appalachia Schools

Abstract

For a sample of 301 8th- through 12th-grade students attending four rural schools located in Appalachia, an examination was made of the ability of several school-related variables including student self-evaluations, teachers' assessments, and grades to predict performance on two scales of the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT) (Verbal Reasoning-VR and Numerical Ability-NA). In addition, the accuracy of student self-evaluations on both the VR and the NA were considered. For the llth-grade sample (n = 149) step- wise multiple regressions employed teacher-estimates of student success, student self-assessments, and grades as predictor variables with VR and NA scores serving as criterion variables. VR scores were explained jointly by teacher-assessments of academic ability, student self-evaluation of verbal ability, and GPA (R2c = .39), while the most valid correlates of NA scores were student self-evaluation of numerical ability, teacher-assessment of probability of success, and GPA (R2C .42). With respect to the ability of students to estimate correctly their verbal and numerical performance intervals on the standardized tests, 8th- and llth-grade students tended to register the largest proportion of correct estimates (.62 and .62, respectively, on the verbal measure; .58 and .74, respectively, on the numerical test). Among those who did not correctly estimate their test performance, 8th graders tended to overestimate and 10th, 11th, and 12th graders tended to underestimate their respective scores while 9th graders tended to under- estimate their numerical performance.