Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L. S., Dailey, A. M., & Power, M. H. (1985). The effect of examiners’ personal familiarity and professional experience on handicapped children’s test performance . The Journal of Educational Research , 78 (1), 141–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.1985.10885589

Participants were assessed twice during three weeks, once by a familiar tester and once by an unfamiliar tester. Students were assessed by either two inexperienced testers or two experienced testers. Examiners were female graduate students in either an early childhood education program (inexperienced) or a program for speech clinicians (experienced).

In this study, 22 White preschool students (17 male, 5 female) with moderate to profound speech and/or language disabilities were tested. The mean age was 58.3 months. All subjects performed within the normal range on IQ tests.

Preschool Language Scale (PLS; Zimmerman, Steiner, & Pond, 1979), a comprehensive language test that assesses auditory comprehension and verbal expression; Measures of Examiner Characteristics; Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ). Three scores were obtained on the RCQ: (a) number of different constructs constituting the description, (b) degree to which these constructs were interrelated hierarchically, and (c) number of positive, neutral, and negative statements. The Attitude Toward Disabled Persons Scale (ATDP; Yuker, Block, & Young, 1966). Scoring the PLS and the ATDP entailed the summing of the testers' written responses to each instrument's set of items.

Preschoolers with disabilities performed more strongly when tested by personally familiar than personally unfamiliar examiners regardless of the testers' experience. There was no difference between experienced and inexperienced testers' cognitive complexity or in their attitude toward people with disabilities. Also, both examiner groups described people with disabilities relatively simplistically and negatively."