Background: Cigarette smoking is a health-risk behavior of global proportions. Self-efficacy plays an important role in both smoking acquisition and smoking resistance. Reliability and validity of an instrument is fundamental to research results, particularly in its simplified form on a different population. The purpose of this study was to…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between transformational leadership and teacher motivation in Southwestern Arizona high schools. Teachers in a school district in Southwestern Arizona comprised of high schools were surveyed using two instruments, Leithwood and Jantzi's (1998) The Leadership and Management of Schools in…

This article reports on the construction and validation of a professional suitability scale, designed for assessing students' suitability for social work practice. Data were collected from 188 field supervisors who provided usable questionnaires, representing a response rate of 74%. Construct validation by exploratory factor analysis identified a…

This article reviews three topics from test theory that continue to raise discussion and controversy and capture test theorists' and constructors' interest. The first topic concerns the discussion of the methodology of investigating and establishing construct validity; the second topic concerns reliability and its misuse, alternative definitions…

The purpose of this study is to assess the validity and reliability of the measurement scores of the learning organization culture, the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ), in a Korean context. A total of 1,529 cases from 11 firms in two major Korean conglomerates were analyzed. Rigorous translation procedures, including both…

Working under classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT) frameworks, this study investigated psychometric properties of the Revised Purdue Spatial Visualization Tests: Visualization of Rotations (Revised PSVT:R). The original version, the PSVT:R was designed by Guay (1976) to measure spatial visualization ability in…

This study details development and validation efforts for a new strength-based assessment instrument: the Social-Emotional Assets and Resilience Scales, Teacher rating form (SEARS-T). A large and diverse nationwide sample of more than 1,500 teacher ratings of students in kindergarten through Grade 12 was obtained. Factor-analytic procedures…

Productive strategies for evaluating outcomes in teacher licensure programs are becoming increasingly important in the education field. Research data from 492 teacher licensure program completers from 2006-2009 in the School of Education, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado (USA) was compiled after accreditation by the Colorado…

Evaluation of public service programming is becoming increasingly important with current funding realities. The taxonomy of evaluation competencies compiled by Ghere et al. (2006) provided the starting place for Taxonomy for Assessing Evaluation Competencies in Extension. The Michigan State University Extension case study described here presents a…

Teacher sense of academic optimism is individual teachers' beliefs that they can teach effectively, their students can learn, and parents will support them so the teacher can press hard for learning. This new construct is grounded in the social cognitive and self-efficacy theories, social capital theory, work on school culture and climate and…

This research evaluates the properties of a measure of culturally linked values of Mexican Americans in early adolescence and adulthood. The article discusses the items derived from qualitative data provided by focus groups in which Mexican Americans' (adolescents, mothers, and fathers) perceptions of key values were discussed. The focus groups…

As the number of electronic services provided by governments to their citizens has increased, so has the need for understanding whether citizens are satisfied with these services. A literature review indicated that, in the United States alone, several government entities, including federal, state, and local governments, have invested large amounts…

The purpose of this study was to examine the test-retest reliability of the last 7-day long form International Physical Activity Questionnaire (Craig et al., 2003) and to examine the construct validity for the measure in a research setting. Participants were 151 male (n = 52) and female (n = 99) university students (M age = 24.15 years, SD = 5.01)…

The current study had two main purposes. The first was to develop and validate an instrument to measure emotional labor among teachers (Teacher Emotional Labor Scale, TELS) with an emphasis on the emotion regulation strategies during critical work events. The second was to investigate whether emotional deviance could be considered as one of the…

A valid and reliable instrument for measuring affect intensity does not exist for adolescents; such a measure may help to refine understanding of emotion among youths. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the psychometric properties and clinical relevance of a measure of affect intensity adapted for youths. Two hundred five community…