Reliability of scaling error detection among dental hygiene instructors is a basis for grade equity. This study tested statistically (ANOVA) grading reliability and variance factors using ten students' scaling performance scores while treating 34 patients. Nine instructors were grouped according to experience, and the patients were grouped according to four difficulty levels. The interinstructor differences were significant in the inexperienced group only. Variance analysis implied that 26 to 94 percent of the grade given is due to instructor differences rather than the students' performances. Experienced graduate students graded most consistently (26 percent of variance due to instructor differences) while faculty were less consistent (64 percent) and inexperienced graduate students exhibited marked inconsistency (94 percent). Error detection appeared to be more closely related to the instructors' educational background than to experience. Results of the study suggest the need for clinical rotation of instructors as well as for instructor calibration.

This study reports on the validity of a structured, standardized admission interview for dentistry. An entire class of 86 fourth‐year dental students at The University of Iowa was studied, and the relationships between information from the interview, faculty ratings, and numerous dental and predental academic data were compared. Many correlations were found to be significant, which permitted technical description of three aspects of validity: concurrent, content, and construct. Reliability of both the instrument and the interview method were shown to affect validity.

1. Self‐paced instruction did not improve performance in raw score on achievement by a different amount for each achievement level, but it did bring all the students to the same level of performance as the group‐paced treatment in less time. 2. Permitting the self‐paced students to take quizzes when they felt prepared improved student performance. 3. Self‐paced instruction lends itself readily to flexible scheduling and thus permitted high achievers to complete the course sooner and allowed new students to start the course at any time. 4. The slide‐tape method also freed the instructor from formal lectures and thus permitted him to spend one additional hour (the unused discussion hour) each week in laboratory exercises with the students.

Students' scores and subsequent grades for clinical courses should reflect their performance. The scores are dependent in part on the reliability of faculty evaluations. Large variance in instructor scoring could unduly affect students' final grades. This study investigated the effect on students' scores of instructor variance in clinical evaluation. The results indicated that instructor variance was responsible for 11 percent of the variance in students' final scores. The remainder of the differences resulted from differences in student performance. More than one half of the students' grades would have been either higher or lower if the scores assigned by one or more individual instructors had been excluded. For all but one student the net change in total scores was less than one standard deviation. The authors conclude that the students' grades were reliable and that individual differences among instructors did not unduly affect the students' final scores.

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