The Home Learning Environment (HLE) focuses on everyday learning habits in families to support the development of children's early cognitive competencies. A growing number of studies have assessed the HLE by using different conceptual approaches and various assessment methods, often focusing on either the home literacy environment or the home…

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…

How can assessments measure complex science learning? Although traditional, multiple-choice items can effectively measure declarative knowledge such as scientific facts or definitions, they are considered less well suited for providing evidence of science inquiry practices such as making observations or designing and conducting investigations.…

As performance goals aim to both procure acknowledgment of one's abilities and to avoid revealing a lack of one's abilities, the authors hypothesized that students hold specific performance goals for different addressees and that there are specific correlational patterns with other motivational constructs. They analyzed a data set of 2,675 pupils…

Existing research posits multiple dimensions of bullying and victimization but has not identified well-differentiated facets of these constructs that meet standards of good measurement: goodness of fit, measurement invariance, lack of differential item functioning, and well-differentiated factors that are not so highly correlated as to detract…

The hypothesis that native language (L1) proficiency promotes English acquisition and overall academic achievement, a key theoretical assumption underlying bilingual education, was tested using latent growth modeling of data from 899 limited-English-proficient (LEP) eighth graders who were followed for 12 years in the National Education…

Cognitive engagement in self-regulated learning was investigated at the levels of component cognitive processes and sets of these components (acquisition and transformation) by collecting data on the cognition of 33 high school seniors. Multitrait-multimethod analyses reveal that measures of self-regulated learning are not coherent. (SLD)

A multitrait-multimethod study collected measures of social-cognitive flexibility, crystallized social knowledge, and academic problem solving from 169 high school seniors. Results support a division of social-cognitive intelligence into declarative and procedural social knowledge (crystallized) and flexible knowledge application as distinct from…

Items from two North American instruments, designed to measure students' evaluation of teaching effectiveness, were administered to university students in different countries. Most of the items were judged by the students to be appropriate and important. Statistical analysis showed strong support for both the convergent and divergent validity of…

In an extension of research on the Marsh/Shavelson model of self-concept, a set of 14 academic self-concept scales was related to school performance in 8 subjects for 507 Australian high school boys. Findings indicate that components of academic self-concept are more differentiated and content-specific than assumed. (SLD)

This study tested the multifaceted, hierarchical structure of self- concept (SC) against alternative models and determined whether academic SC can be discriminated from academic grades. Results supported the multidimensional interpretation of SC and demonstrated that general SC could be interpreted as distinct from but correlated with academic SC.…

The accuracy of various evaluation methods for assessing teacher effectiveness was investigated. College instructors (n=43) were rated by students, colleagues, trained classroom raters, former students, and themselves. Results indicate these methods to be more valid than prior research would suggest. (BS)

The construct validity of 14 measures used in college faculty personnel decisions was evaluated through a multitrait-multimethod matrix for data from 89 faculty members in 7 departments. The three-pronged model of teaching, research, and service was not validated. Exploratory factor analysis identified five or six behavior domains for evaluation.…

The construct validities of the Self Description Questionnaire I, the Perceived Social Competence Scale, and the Multidimensional Measure of Children's Perceptions of Control were assessed, using 508 seventh through ninth graders in Sydney (Australia). Factor analysis, multitrait-multimethod analyses, and patterns of correlations with additional…