Problem Statement: Among individuals aged 12 years or older, 14.3% (40.0 million) reporting the use of an illicit drug in the previous year. Given the prevalence of drug abuse, it is increasingly important to determine effective screening practices, treatment procedures, and best practices among various subpopulations to identify drug use-related…

To determine the effects of explicit instruction (EI) and potential moderators in second/foreign language (L2) teaching, this study meta-analyzed 28 primary reports (a total of 67 unique samples, N = 3754). The main results show that EI was significantly effective in facilitating L2 development, with effect sizes ranging from moderate to large…

It is often hypothesized that prior knowledge strongly predicts learning performance. It can affect learning positively mediated through some processes and negatively mediated through others. We examined the relation between prior knowledge and learning in a meta-analysis of 8776 effect sizes. The stability of individual differences, that is, the…

Cognitive abilities are related to job performance. However, there is less agreement about the relative contribution of general versus specific cognitive abilities to job performance. Similarly, it is not clear how cognitive abilities operate in the context of complex occupations. This study assessed the role of cognitive abilities on the…

The Social Competence Observation Scale (SCOS) is an objective observational measure developed to assess the social performance of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This paper describes development of the SCOS and results of initial testing of reliability and treatment sensitivity for a sample of 12 children, ages 4-6 years, with ASD.…

We investigated the validity and screening effectiveness of the PHQ-2 and PHQ-9 scores in 229 college students in a cross-sectional design. PHQ associations with Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-3 internalizing scales suggest PHQ scores are effective screening tools for college students and may aid in effective triage and service needs.

Despite its name, the halo effect in student evaluation of teaching (SET) response is not mystical. Halo in SET results from psychological processes that undermine SET validity, particularly for summative evaluation (pay decisions, etc.). These processes span psychological concepts of cognition, motivation and affect. This paper demonstrates that…

Publication bias threatens meta-analysis validity. It is often assessed via the funnel plot; an asymmetric plot implies small-study effects, and publication bias is one cause of the asymmetry. Egger's regression test is a widely used tool to quantitatively assess such asymmetry. It examines the association between the observed effect sizes and…

Mixture IRT models address the heterogeneity in a population by extracting latent classes and allowing item parameters to vary between latent classes. Once the latent classes are extracted, they need to be further examined to be characterized. Some approaches have been adopted in the literature for this purpose. These approaches examine either the…

Single-case design has a long history of use for assessing intervention effectiveness for children with disabilities. Although these designs have been widely employed for more than 50 years, recent years have been especially dynamic in terms of growth in the use of single-case design and application of standards designed to improve the validity…

To identify valid measures of vocal development in young children with autism spectrum disorder in the early stages of language learning, we evaluated the convergent validity, divergent validity, and sensitivity to change (across 12 months) of two measures of vocal communication and two measures of vocal complexity through conventional coding of…

We aimed to refine the previously proposed antisocial subscale for the Dimensional Clinical Personality Inventory 2 (IDCP-ASPD). The sample involved 628 Brazilian adults between 18 and 81 years old. We administered the revised ASPD subscale (IDCP-ASPD-R), the Affective and Cognitive Measure of Empathy (ACME), the Crime and Analogous Behavior Scale…

The effects of different response option orders on survey responses have been studied extensively. The typical research design involves examining the differences in response characteristics between conditions with the same item stems and response option orders that differ in valence--either incrementally arranged (e.g., strongly disagree to…

Parents' executive functions (EFs), or cognitive skills facilitating thought and behavior management, are meaningful correlates of parenting behavior. EFs are theorized to support parents in inhibiting reactive responses, managing information during parent--child interactions, and adapting to novel developmental demands. Less effective EFs…

Thousands of education institutions worldwide rely on IELTS scores as criteria for accepting international students whose first language is not English. Individual studies have found varying degrees of strength of correlations and conflicting results between IELTS entry scores and subsequent academic success. These conflicting results were…