The New Mexico Public Education Department developed the Kindergarten Observation Tool (KOT) as a multidimensional observational measure of students' knowledge and skills at kindergarten entry. The primary purpose of the KOT is to inform instruction, so that kindergarten teachers can use the information about their students' knowledge and skills…

This study investigates the psychometric properties of the Romanian version of the Dyadic Coping Inventory with data from 510 married couples. The results confirm the theoretical factorial structure of the Dyadic Coping Inventory for both partners, indicating convergent validity, discriminate validity, and measurement invariance (across genders…

The current study describes the development and construct validation of a situational judgment test for assessing the strategic knowledge of classroom management in elementary schools. Classroom scenarios and accompanying courses of action were constructed, of which 17 experts confirmed the content validity. A pilot study and a cross-validation…

The New York City Department of Education's (DOE) annual survey of parents, students, and teachers is the largest of its kind in the United States. The DOE relies on the survey to identify schools' strengths and to target areas for improvement. School Survey scores, along with attendance, are also the only non-academic indicators used in the DOE's…

This study examined the scores on a state standards-based Grade 5 Science assessment obtained by a group of students without learning disabilities who took the standard form of the test and by three groups of students with learning disabilities: one taking the standard form of the test without accommodations or modifications, a second taking the…

As part of Phase 3 of the Universal Preschool Child Outcomes Study (UPCOS-3), Mathematica Policy Research worked with the First 5 LA Children and Families Commission and Los Angeles Universal Preschool (LAUP) to conduct a descriptive study of the characteristics of classrooms in LAUP programs during winter 2010. This study has a particular focus…

Real world data often fail to meet the underlying assumption of population normality. The Rank Transformation (RT) procedure has been recommended as an alternative to the parametric factorial analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The purpose of this study was to compare the Type I error and power properties of the RT ANCOVA to the parametric procedures…

The central objective of factor analysis is to explain the greatest amount of variance in a data set with the smallest number of factors. Higher-order analysis is an invaluable tool that offers the benefit of parsimony provided by first-order analysis with the opportunity to make data-based generalizations beyond the first-order. Higher-order…

In an earlier study, I. Newman and D. Waechter (1999) investigated graduate education students' perceptions and attitudes toward cheating in scientific research. A questionnaire was developed that was based on reactions and concerns related to cheating behavior seen in a public television video about faking scientific data. This study examined the…

This study examined the internal consistency of the Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) (L. Schrener, S. Juillerat, and Noel-Levitz Group, 1997) and the latent structures of the instrument. The SSI is an instrument that measures students' satisfaction with their college experiences. The SSI was administered to 251 students randomly selected from…

This paper reports evidence on the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Chinese Family Assessment Instrument (C-FAI), an instrument developed to assess family functioning in Chinese populations. A convenience sample of 1,462 adolescents from junior secondary schools completed the C-FAI and measures of parent-adolescent conflict.…

Q-type factor analysis was used to re-analyze baseline data collected in 1957, on 47 men aged 65-91. Q-type analysis is the use of factor methods to study persons rather than tests. Although 550 variables were originally studied involving psychiatry, medicine, cerebral metabolism and chemistry, personality, audiometry, dichotic and diotic memory,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factor structure of a Factors Influencing Pursuit of Higher Education (FIPHE) Questionnaire which addresses factors influencing a person's decision to pursue higher education. Researchers used a literature-based, rational factors approach to develop the questionnaire; the three-part study included a…