As part of its "Guiding Principles for Evaluators," the American Evaluation Association (AEA) requires that evaluators develop cultural competencies. Using a successive-independent-samples design, the researchers sought to compare perceptions of cultural competence across a duration of 10 years. Qualitative data were collected via online…

Drawing on Glenn Fulcher's extensive work in performance-based language assessment of speaking, this paper explores the assessment of L2 speaking ability in local language testing contexts. For that purpose, I review Fulcher's influential work that highlights the relationship between the speaking construct, the task, the performance, and the…

Email has become the most preferred form of business communication. Writing "good" email has become an essential skill required in the industry. "Good" email writing not only facilitates clear communication, but also makes a positive impression on the recipient, whether it be one's colleague or a customer. The aim of this paper…

Teacher observations have become a national education phenomenon, mandated by federal policies and promoted by philanthropists. They are crucial components of teacher evaluation systems that often have high stakes for teachers and school systems, but have sparked little innovation. Recent calls to make teacher evaluations better, faster, and…

Objective: Work Place-Based Assessments (WPBAs) were introduced into psychiatry along with the new curriculum in 2005. The Royal College of Psychiatrists decided to pilot several WPBAs to ascertain their suitability. Method: Eight types of assessments (Case-Based Discussion, Assessment of Clinical Expertise, Mini-Assessed Clinical Encounter,…

This paper describes one reviewer's experience of reviewing for the journal "System" over an eight-year period, 2003-2011. The paper reports on the reviews produced by the single reviewer, which have been compiled into a specific purpose--an "occluded"--corpus (Swales, 1996) of 122 reviews, comprising 93,000 words. The paper first describes the…

Measuring the various structural aspects of the organizing framework for this volume and relating them to match quality and relevant developmental outcomes is a critical step toward assessing the framework's utility for practitioners, policymakers, and program evaluators. Nakkula and Harris take a step in that direction by exploring core…

The interrater reliability of the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) was investigated under the condition that interviewers had to have been trained and/or experienced in its administration and scoring. Both corrected and noncorrected Pearson's product-moment coefficients were generated to assess interinterviewer, interrespondent, and mixed interrater…

Psychological interventions provide linguistic data that are particularly useful for testing mechanisms of action and improving intervention methodologies. For this study, emotional expression in an Internet-based intervention for women with breast cancer (n = 63) was analyzed via rater coding and 2 computerized coding methods (Linguistic Inquiry…

Facial attractiveness has been associated with many (social) advantages in life, like greater popularity, acceptance, and social competence. Because social evaluations and acceptance are important factors contributing to self-esteem (SE), we hypothesized that high levels of attractiveness would be related to increased levels of SE. To test this…

Two studies extended psychometric research on the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS) with kindergarten and preschool children (N[subscript 1] = 60-7[subscript 1]; N[subscript 2] = 35) and their teachers. These studies used a multi-method approach to replicate and extend previous findings concerning the convergent validity of the STRS…

This paper describes a study comparing paper-based marking (PBM) and onscreen marking (OSM) in Hong Kong utilising English language essay scripts drawn from the live 2007 Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) Year 11 English Language Writing Paper. In the study, 30 raters from the 2007 HKCEE Writing Paper marked on paper 100…

Because of the importance of developing highly skilled school leaders, statewide assessments of 784 Texas public school administrators were compared to determine how leadership skills varied by type of campus (urban, suburban and rural) and by campus student achievement ratings. Important findings indicate differences exist by campus type and by…

This article explores the overlaps and disconnects between the competencies evaluators acquire during graduate school and those required and desired by employers. To investigate this relationship, two different surveys are administered, one for job seekers and the other for employers; 205 postings in the American Evaluation Association job bank…

Because of the importance of developing highly skilled urban school leaders, statewide assessments of 248 urban Texas public school administrators were analyzed to determine principal confidence levels in leadership skill domains identified by the National Policy Board of Educational Administration (NPBEA). Important findings indicate differences…