Undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students' motivations have a strong influence on whether and how they will persist through challenging coursework and into STEM careers. Proper conceptualization and measurement of motivation constructs, such as students' expectancies and perceptions of value and cost (i.e.,…

This investigation's aims were to map prevalence, normative trends, and patterns of continuity or change in school-based peer victimization throughout formal schooling (i.e., Grades K-12), and determine whether specific victimization patterns (i.e., differential trajectories) were associated with children's academic performance. A sample of 383…

Many recent studies have aimed to demonstrate that specific types of reading comprehension depend on different underlying cognitive abilities. In these studies, it is often implicitly assumed that reading comprehension is a multidimensional construct. The general aim of this study was to examine the dimensionality of a large pool of reading…

We compared 5 different statistics (i.e., G index, gamma, "d'", sensitivity, specificity) used in the social sciences and medical diagnosis literatures to assess calibration accuracy in order to examine the relationship among them and to explore whether one statistic provided a best fitting general measure of accuracy. College…

A multifactor perspective on writing self-efficacy was examined in 2 studies. Three factors were proposed--self-efficacy for writing ideation, writing conventions, and writing self-regulation--and a scale constructed to reflect these factors. In Study 1, middle school students (N = 697) completed the Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale (SEWS), along…

Extensive support for the seemingly paradoxical negative effects of school- and class-average achievement on academic self-concept (ASC)-the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE)--is based largely on secondary students in Western countries or on cross-cultural Program for International Student Assessment studies. There is little research testing the…

We had 3 aims in the present study: (a) to examine the dimensionality of various evaluative approaches to scoring writing samples (e.g., quality, productivity, and curriculum-based measurement [CBM] writing scoring), (b) to investigate unique language and cognitive predictors of the identified dimensions, and (c) to examine gender gap in the…

The present study revisited the unresolved issue of the long-term effects of part-time working intensity during high school on students' achievement, participation in postsecondary education, time allocation, and work-related values and expectations. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (N = 14,654), the effects of part-time…

Two multivariate studies examined the applicability of the theory of planned behavior in gauging students' attitudes toward mathematics, as well as the predictive power of mathematics attitudes in explaining students' grades in mathematics. Middle-school students from the United States (N = 382) and Belarus (N = 339) participated. Confirmatory…

Models of personal epistemology have not been sufficiently integrated despite conceptual similarities. We attempted to model both dimensional and positional aspects of personal epistemology, as well as examine the domain specificity of these phenomena. The conceptual framework for this study was a new model of epistemic and ontological cognitive…

The hypothesis that college grade point average (GPA) is predictable by student time management was tested. Ninety college students completed a time-management questionnaire in 1983. Four years later, comparison with cumulative GPA indicated that time-management practices may influence achievement. Time management was a better predictor than…