This study examined the relation of parental involvement with Korean adolescent academic achievement and self-efficacy, and the mediating role of academic self-efficacy in this relationship. We investigated the effects of parental involvement in both overall and domain-specific self-efficacy and academic achievement across three academic subjects…

Understanding students' learning dispositions has been a focus for research in education for many years. A range of alternative approaches to conceptualising and measuring this broad construct have been developed. Traditional psychometric measures aim to produce scales that satisfy the requirements for research; however, such measures have an…

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) has long been used in the social sciences to depict the relationships between variables/items and latent traits. Researchers face many choices when using EFA, including the choice of rotation criterion, which can be difficult given that few research articles have discussed and/or demonstrated their differences.…

A latent variable modeling approach for examining population similarities and differences in observed variable relationship and mean indexes in incomplete data sets is discussed. The method is based on the full information maximum likelihood procedure of model fitting and parameter estimation. The procedure can be employed to test group identities…

This study attempted to replicate Miller's (2007) finding that a bilinear domain-specific model of Asian American acculturation demonstrated superior model fit when compared to unilinear and bilinear domain-generic models. Current confirmatory factor analytic tests of competing acculturation models in a cross-validation sample of 306 participants…

DIMTEST is a nonparametric hypothesis-testing procedure designed to test the assumptions of a unidimensional and locally independent item response theory model. Several previous Monte Carlo studies have found that using linear factor analysis to select the assessment subtest for DIMTEST results in a moderate to severe loss of power when the exam…

The purpose of this study was to test a 2-factor model of affective health in women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA; n = 82) or osteoarthritis (OA; n = 88). Positive and negative social interactions and affect were assessed for 11 consecutive weeks. For each participant, Vulnerability and Resilience factors were created from factor analyses of…

Factorial analyses differ from nonfactorial analyses in that in the former all possible hypotheses (all possible main effects and interaction effects) are tested regardless of their substantive interest to the researcher and their interpretability, while in the latter, only substantive and interpretable hypotheses are tested. This paper shows the…

A model is proposed for empirically testing the appropriateness of using tetrachoric correlations for a set of dichotomous variables. A testing method is proposed that uses information from trivariate marginal tables. Assumptions are tested with real and simulated data. (SLD)

Differential item functioning (DIF) continues to receive attention both in applied and methodological studies. Because DIF can be an indicator of irrelevant variance that can influence test scores, continuing to evaluate and improve the accuracy of detection methods is an essential step in gathering score validity evidence. Methods for detecting…

As useful as LISREL may be in model estimation and testing, its most significant contribution to date is the encouragement and example it gives for right thinking about research and right planning of research. The encouragement to hypothesize the best possible model for the process that is the object of study, and to plan measurements that…

This study explored evidence of the construct validity of the interest scales on the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS; Campbell, Hyne, & Nilsen, 1992) by testing evidence for convergent validity with the Strong Interest Inventory (SII; Hansen & Campbell, 1985). Two hypotheses were formulated. First, matching CISS and SII scales…

A modification index is presented to aid in reformulating hypothetical models rejected after analysis of empirical data. This index is an improvement over the one in the LISREL V computer program in that it takes into account changes in all parameters of the model when one parameter is freed. (SLD)

The Lisrel-model with structured means was used to study similarities and differences in the development of mathematical ability between two student groups as measured by two tests on three successive occasions. Procedures for testing models to assess the contribution on an individual parameter to the goodness of fit are described. (Author/BS)

A continuous assessment and a categorical diagnosis of the presence (i.e., flourishing) and the absence (i.e., languishing) of mental health were proposed and applied to the Midlife in the United States study data, a nationally representative sample of adults between the ages of 25 and 74 years (N = 3,032). Confirmatory factor analyses supported…