This study examined the factorial and construct validity of a multi-dimensional measure of motives for writing with middle school students. The Writing Motivation Questionnaire included 28 items assessing seven motives for writing. Two motives assessed intrinsic reasons for writing (curiosity, involvement); three motives addressed extrinsic…

Virtual Environment for Social Information Processing (VESIP™) is a web-based social information processing assessment developed for youth in grades 3-7. VESIP was developed to address: (1) the broader assessment of social information processing in a variety of socially challenging situations; and (2) the need for technically strong and scalable…

While adolescence is a critical stage of development marked by heightened bottom-up emotional reactivity and immature top-down regulatory control, research on emotion regulation has relatively neglected middle childhood to adolescence years. This may be attributed to the limited number and scope of age-appropriate, reliable, and valid measures of…

Aim: To evaluate the psychometric properties of a new measure of school belonging. Rationale: The sense of belonging to the school (organisation) as opposed to individuals within a school (peers) plays a significant part in pupils' behaviour and wellbeing. To date, few psychometrically robust, theoretically driven and brief scales exist.…

The present study assesses the factor structure, psychometric adequacy, and invariance across sex and age of the Relational Provisions Loneliness Questionnaire (RPLQ). Discriminant validity with an external criterion was also tested. In a sample of Portuguese adolescents, from 7th to 9th grade (N = 817), Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) were…

Statement of Problem: Although there is a rapidly increasing interest in creativity in specific domains such as science and math, there are not enough valid and reliable scales to assess students' creativity in these domains. If mathematical creativity potential can be measured, then the curriculum can be adapted to address the needs of creative…

The present study reports on a replication of the technical adequacy of the Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (SSWQ), which is a 16-item self-report instrument for assessing youth's academic efficacy, educational purpose, joy of learning, and school connectedness, with a sample of adolescents in Grades 6 to 7 (N = 438). Findings confirmed…

In this study, we sought to create and validate a brief measure to assess students' perceptions of kindness in school. Participants included 1,753 students in Grades 4 to 8 attending public schools in a large school district in southern British Columbia. The School Kindness Scale (SKS) demonstrated a unidimensional factor structure and adequate…

The purpose of this research is to develop a reliable and valid instrument in order to determine the elementary school students' levels about reflective thinking. A total of 320 students of 6th, 7th and 8th grades from 6 different primary schools participated in the study. It was identified that the instrument was composed of totally 17 items with…

The current study further establishes the reliability and validity of the Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire (BPBQ), a self-report survey that allows for an examination of participation in various bullying participant role behaviors including bully, assistant to the bully, victim, defender of the victim, and outsider. The study included…

The aim of this study was to develop and validate Science Homework Scale (SHS) which assesses middle-school (grades 6-8) students' perceptions of teachers' homework practices and homework self-regulation in science. Students' perceptions of teachers' homework practices included homework quality and feedback on homework while students' homework…

The purposes of this study were to develop a culture specific critical thinking ability test for 6, 7, and 8. grade students in Turkey and to use it as an assessment instrument for giftedness. For these purposes, item pool involving 22 items was formed by writing items focusing on the current and common events presented in (Turkish) media from…

We reported findings of an exploratory validation study of a revised universal screening instrument: the Student Risk Screening Scale--Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE) for use with middle school students. Tested initially for use with elementary-age students, the SRSS-IE was adapted to include seven additional items reflecting…

The Student Orientation to School Questionnaire (SOS-Q) is a multidimensional student-centered assessment tool for measuring psychosocial facilitators of student engagement. The SOS-Q is based in research on the self-system models of motivation and direct student input on perceived supports and barriers for high school completion. The current…

Empirical results from two studies--a simulation study and an experimental one--indicated that, in achievement data of the problem-solving type where a specific subject matter area is being tested, the greater the variety of the algorithms used, the higher the dimensionality of the test data. (Author/PN)