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Slosson educational tests and assessments for teachers, educators and other professionals, in schools, hospitals, and corrections. Used to test students in regular and special education, remedial reading and math, intelligence, visual motor, speech language for school screening and forms for teachers to evaluation students' mental abilities.

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(TOPS-2-1A) Test Of Problem Solving 2 Adolescent kit

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Test Purpose
While other tests may assess thinking skills by tapping mathematical, spatial, or nonverbal potential, the TOPS 2 Adolescent assesses critical thinking abilities based on the student's language strategies using logic and experience.

Test Description
The TOPS 2 Adolescent uses a natural context of problem-solving situations related to adolescent experiences and assesses five different decision-making skill areas critical to academic, problem solving, and social success.

Based on the research of Richard Paul, the TOPS 2 Adolescent emphasizes the integrative disposition of critical thinking by focusing on these cognitive processes:

understanding/comprehension analysis interpretation
self-regulation evaluation explanation
inference insight decision-making
intent/purpose problem solving acknowledgment

The test is comprised of five subtests (18 written passages) that assess a student's performance of these skills. The subtests require the student to pay careful attention to, process, and think about what they hear and read; think about problems with a purpose in mind; resist the urge to be impulsive; and express answers verbally.

Subtests

Subtest A: Making Inferences
The student is asked to give a logical explanation about a situation, combining what he knows or can see with previous experience/background information. Students who do well on this subtest make plausible inferences, predictions, or interpretations.
Subtest B: Determining Solutions
The student is asked to provide a logical solution for some aspect of a situation presented in a passage.
Subtest C: Problem Solving
This subtest requires a student to recognize the problem, think of alternative solutions, evaluate the options, and state an appropriate solution for a given situation. It also includes stating how to avoid specific problems.
Subtest D: Interpreting Perspectives
A student who does well on this subtest will evaluate other points of view in order to make a conclusion.
Subtest E: Transferring Insights
The student is asked to compare analogous situations by using information stated in the passage.

Examiner Qualifications
The test should only be administered by a trained professional familiar with language
disorders (e.g., speech-language pathologist, psychologist).

Test Procedures

Turn to the first passage in the Reading Passages Book and show it to the student. In order to minimize possible auditory memory/reading deficiencies, the passages/items are read aloud in a normal tone and rate. Provide the student with blank paper to cover items on each page that have not been administered.
Each task is presented in its entirety to every student. There are no basals or ceilings.
The only allowable prompt is used if the student gives a response that is unclear to the test examiner rather than improving the quality of a response.
Acceptable responses for each test item are listed on the test form. Acceptable and unacceptable responses are listed in the Scoring Standards found in the Examiner's Manual.

Testing Time

40 minutes

Scoring/Types of Scores

A score of 1 or 0 is assigned to each response based on the relevancy of the response to the question and on the quality of the response.
Some test items consist of two parts. The student's response to the second part of the item determines whether the item is scored as correct or incorrect.
Acceptable responses are indicated on the test form and acceptable and unacceptable response examples are listed in the Examiner's Manual.
Raw scores are converted to:
Age Equivalents
Percentile Ranks
Standard Scores

Discussion of Performance
The Discussion of Performance section found in the Examiner's Manual was developed to guide the examiner to make appropriate and educationally-relevant recommendations for remediation based on a clear understanding of each subtest.

It includes a research-based rationale for the importance of teaching thinking skills, clinically sound information about each task, what the student needs to do to be successful with each task, how the tasks relate to academic performance, the specific steps a student goes through to complete each thinking task, and the breakdown of what the student's responses reflect about his thinking skills.

Standardization/Statistics
Two studies were conducted on The TOPS 2 Adolescent � the item pool and standardization studies. The item pool study consisted of 526 subjects and the standardization study consisted of 1,051 subjects. An additional 138 subjects with language disorders were included in the validity studies. The subjects in both studies represented the latest National Census for race, gender, age, and educational placement and subjects with IEPs for special services but who attend regular education classes were included.

Reliability�established by the use of the following for all subtests and the total test at all age levels:
SEM
Inter-Rater Reliability
Test-Retest
Reliability Based on Item Homogeneity (KR20)

The test-retest coefficient is .91 for the total test, the SEM is 3.56 for the total test. Based on these tests, the TOPS 2 Adolescent has satisfactory levels of reliability for all tasks and the total test at all age levels.

Validity�established by the use of construct and contrasted group validity.
Contrast Groups (t-values): Test discriminates between subjects with normal language development and subjects with language disorders
Point Biserial Correlations
Subtest Intercorrelations
Correlations Between Subtests and Total Test

The t-Values for differences between normal and language-disordered subjects were significant at the .01 level all age levels that is, The TOPS 2 Adolescent clearly discriminates between these groups. Inspection of all the biserial correlations reveals highly satisfactory levels of item consistency with 94% of the individual items showing statistically significant pass/fail correlations with subtest scores.

Race/Socioeconomic Group Difference Analyses�conducted at the item and subtest/task levels. The analysis of performance differences among race/socioeconomic groups was conducted at the subtest/task levels.
z-tests Chi Square analysis at the item and subtest levels
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) F-tests

Of the 1332 z-tests, 89 were significant/showed race differences. This low number/percentage suggests that race is not a strong factor. The relationships found at the subset level did not appear to be strong. The contingency coefficients ranged from .07 to .52. In 92% of the analysis done on race and SES, there were no race or SES effects.

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