Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University. / I. Problem:
To construct a measure of classroom adjustment which would be easily administered and interpreted by the classroom teacher.
II. Procedure:
A. Two measures were developed; an 86 item Teacher Checklist and a 40 item Parent Rating Scale.
1. Classroom teachers were asked to submit situations which would give evidence of good classroom adjustment. Ten trait categories were established as follows: concentration, cooperation, courtesy, emotional stability, friendliness, health, initiative, responsib- ility, self-confidence and self-reliance. A list of 86 items, to check the child's performance in these trait areas was complied. i.e. "He is wiilling to lead Opening Exercises (initiative)." Any item which could not be objectively observed was discarded. For ease of checking, the 86 items were so arranged as to follow the routine of a normal classroom day. Each child was rated twice on the Checklist. In 12 classrooms, (299 children) the child was rated by his own teacher first, then by a second person. In 4 classrooms (101 children) the child's teacher did both ratings with a lapse of 4 weeks between the two.
2. The Parent Rating Scale again attempted to get evidence on the same ten traits. i.e. "He can shop by himself (Initiative)." The parents were asked to check each item as "Usually, Often or Occasionally."
B. Four hundred first grade children who participated in the study were administered the following tests:
1. Otis Quick Scoring J.iental Ability Test.
2. The Teacher Checklist of Adjustment.
3. The Parent Rating Scale was filled out by parents of the children.
4. The Detroit Word Recognition Test and the Boston University Reading Tests were used to measure reading achievement.
III. Major Findings and Conclusions:
A. Teachers and parents found both measures were easily administered.
B. Reliability was established as follows:
1. For the Teacher Checklist
a. Correlation between 2 raters was .73.
b. Correlation on same rater twice was .97.
c. Split half reliability for whole test corrected by Spearman Brown Formula was .96.
d. Item analysis revealed significant differences for 81 out of 86 items for high and low scorers.
2. For the Parent Rating Scale·
a. Split half correlation on whole.test, corrected by Spearman Brown Formula, was .70.
b. Item analysis revealed significant differences on 24 of the 40 items.
c. The Parent Rating Scale did not correlate significantly with the Teacher Checklist (.16).
C. Relation of Adjustment to Reading Achievement
1. Positive Correlations of .48 and ·57 were found between adjustment and reading achievement.
2. Children were divided on the basis of adjustment scores into three groups--high, middle and low.
a. The means of these three groups on the Detroit Word Recognition Test were 25.76, 19.00 and 13.80, respectively. Means on the Boston University Test were 88.3, 52.0 and 40.5, respectively. The differenees in achievement were statistically significant between high and middle as well as between middle and low groups.
b. The mean mental age for the high group was 90.5 months, for the middle 82.5 and for the low 80.0.
c. The difference in mental age between the high and the middle group was very significant but the difference between the middle and low groups was not significant.
d. The mean IQ's were 118, 107 and 105 for high, middle and low groups, respectively. The difference between the high and middle groups was statistically significant but this was not true between the middle and low groups.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/24398 |
| Date | January 1957 |
| Creators | Eldridge, Olive F. |
| Publisher | Boston University |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Based on investigation of the BU Libraries' staff, this work is free of known copyright restrictions. |
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