Past Academic Performance Research Articles

Putting the boot on the other foot: Candidates' descriptions of interviewers

To find out how selection interviewers gather information, 101 candidates were intercepted immediately after initial graduate recruitment interviews, and questioned on the coverage of 26 topics. Interviewers were found to give more frequent coverage to topics concerned with future job and knowledge of company than present or past academic performance. The results were interpreted as indicating an interviewer preference for topic areas where he had an advantage over the candidate in terms of superior knowledge.

Why Did You Learn in School Today? Teachers' Perceptions of Causality

Teachers' attributions of cause for a pupil's past performance are investigated under varying experimental conditions. The conditions varied are the race and sex of the child, and the quality of the past performance. As predicted, teachers' causal attributions for past academic performance differ depending upon the race of the child. Black pupils' performances are seen as more externally caused than are identical performances ascribed to white children. These findings hold regardless of the quality of the past performance. Sex of the stimulus child has no effect on the causal attributions given by teachers regardless of race of pupil or quality of performance. These and additionalfindings are discussed in light of the equality of teachers' expressed achievement expectations. The possible effects of such attributions on children's patterns of attribution and their achievement orientation are also considered.

SELF‐REPORT PREDICTORS: A REMINDER1

How do tests and self‐reports compare as predictors of academic performance? Do tests add to the predictability from self‐reports? College seniors in eight sections of an evaluation course were administered the Quantitative Evaluative Device, the Cooperative English Test: Reading Comprehension, the Concept Mastery Test, and two questionnaires concerning past academic performance, student‐estimated abilities, and reading habits. The criteria were composite test scores and letter grades. The best predictors were two self‐reported variables, GPA and grade in an educational psychology course, and a test variable, the QED. Multiple Rs using questionnaire data for the predictors were increased slightly by adding the test scores, but on cross‐validation the rs for the two predictor sets were essentially identical. The utility of the tests, then, was not supported either by zero‐order correlations or by cross‐validated increments. Therefore an investigator is reminded at least to include self‐report measures in his set of predictors.

Otis Self-Administering Tests of Mental Ability, Intermediate Form, in Iran

A Persian form of the Otis Self-administering Tests of Mental Ability, Intermediate Form, was administered to a representative sample of Iranian secondary school pupils (944 boys and 554 girls). Iranian Ss as a group scored strikingly lower than their American counterparts. Boys scored significantly higher than girls both in different grades and across grades. Scores correlated significantly with a past academic performance criterion. Test-retest reliability coefficients over a 2-wk. interval were low relative to those given in the test manual.

THE RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE PERSIAN FORM OF AH5

Summary. An investigation into the test‐retest reliability and validity of the Persian form of AH5 is reported. Among 100 12th grade students, the test correlated significantly with another measure of verbal ability (Otis) and a composite mean score representing past academic performance. Test‐retest reliability coefficients over four weeks (117 12th grade boys) and 12 months (108 12th grade boys) were relatively low but comparable to those recorded for the English version. There was considerable rise in mean score from the first to the second administration and some evidence that those with lower initial scores tended to gain more in the second administration than those with higher initial scores.