The COVID-19 pandemic is the most serious public health crisis in the lifetime of most living adults, but it may be a precursor of crises to come in the decades ahead. Apart from the health challenges associated with the pandemic, the public reaction to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic offers important insights into the role of lifelong learning…

It is necessary to test for equivalence of measurements across groups to guarantee that comparisons of regression coefficients or mean scores of a latent factor are meaningful. Unfortunately, when tested, many scales display nonequivalence. Several researchers have suggested that nonequivalence may be used as a useful source of information as to…

We examined whether epistemic beliefs predict students' evaluation of documents. Undergraduates read two texts on climate change. Participants judged the trustworthiness of each text and then indicated the criteria for their rating. We found that readers who believe strongly in relying on personal interpretations rather than on authorities trusted…

The general public's responses to people with intellectual disabilities influence the likely success or failure of policies aimed at increasing their social inclusion. The present paper provides a review of general population based research into awareness, attitudes and beliefs regarding intellectual disability published in English between 1990…

The "Attitudes Towards Integration Scale" (ATIS) assesses the attitude of the general public towards the school integration of children with disabilities. The scale was empirically created in a pilot study (n=351) and later used to survey 2158 people. The data from both surveys are analysed in the present paper; the results show that the…

This paper provides a detailed analysis of different aspects of public attitudes towards faith schools in Britain. It examines two questions relating to government policy on this issue and two questions that ask about the perceived outcomes of this type of school. After discussing existing public opinion on this issue it uses data from the British…

Using 65 items from a mental health screening questionnaire, the History Opinion Inventory-Revised (HOI-R), the present study compared three strategies of scale construction--(1) internal (based on factor analysis), (2) external (based on empirical performance) and (3) intuitive (based on clinicians' opinion)--to predict whether 203,595 U.S. Air…