Schools and education systems are being challenged to improve the evaluation of teacher professional development, yet there is a lack of practical tools for doing so. This article describes the development and validation of a new instrument to assess teachers' perceptions of the impact of professional development. This instrument, designed to be…

Objective: The measurement of Family Feedback on Child Welfare Services (FF-CWS) is gaining prominence as an efficacy indicator and is coherent with concerns about family-centered practice and empowerment. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an instrument that would overcome the scarcity of psychometrically sound measures in this…

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) requires teacher preparation programs in the United States (US) to document their ability to produce teachers who can effectively promote the learning of a diverse P-12 student population (CAEP, 2013). To meet CAEP accreditation standards, leaders of teacher preparation programs are…

Two quasi-experimental field studies (N = 419; 248) tested the effects of an outdoor environmental education program based in local Protected Natural Areas (PNAs) on 3rd-to-6th-grade students' proenvironmental attitudes and behaviors. Results show the program increases children's place attachment, proenvironmental attitudes, ethics and…

In the United Kingdom there is a long tradition of residential outdoor learning provision, but to date there is limited research evidence for the direct educational benefits of such experiences, and to both critics and supporters the distinction between such visits and "holidays in school time" is not always apparent. This paper…

Psychometrically sound evaluation measures are vital for examining the contribution of professional training to organizational success in a reliable manner. As training evaluations tend to be both time-consuming and labor-intensive, there is an increasing demand for economic evaluation inventories. Simultaneously, evaluation measures have to meet…

Introduction: Measures of parental self-efficacy (PSE) for healthy dietary or physical activity (PA) behaviors in children have been used in several studies; however, further psychometric validation of PSE for these behaviors is needed. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of a new PSE instrument. Methods:…

Access to Head Start has been shown to improve children's preschool experiences and school readiness on selected factors through the end of 1st grade. Two more years of follow-up, through the end of 3rd grade, can now be examined to determine whether these effects continue into the middle elementary grades. The statistical design and impact…

The study reported in this article, a Multi-Stage Longitudinal Comparative Design Stage II evaluation conducted as a planned preliminary efficacy evaluation (psychometric evaluation of measures, short-term controlled outcome studies, etc.) of the Changing Lives Program (CLP), provided evidence for the reliability and validity of the qualitative…

A DESCRIPTION IS GIVEN OF ITEM SAMPLING, OR "PSYCHOMETRIC-STATISTICAL INFERENCE," AN APPROACH TO GATHERING AND USING EDUCATIONAL DATA THAT ALLOWS STATISTICAL INFERENCES TO BE MADE SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH PSYCHOMETRIC INFERENCES. THIS IS A PROCEDURE IN WHICH BOTH PEOPLE AND ITEMS ARE SAMPLED AND THE DATA FROM A SAMPLE OF PEOPLE TAKING A SAMPLE OF ITEMS…

The lack of support for mental health-related projects by private philanthropy, even among those that express an interest in mental health, is due in large part to the subjectivity of the grant review process. To address this problem, Whaley, Rodriguez, and Alexander developed the Grant Proposal Rating Form (GPRF) to make the grant review process…

U.S. universities and colleges offering distance education courses have increased immensely since 1998, and by 2004 it was expected that distance learners will constitute about 14% of all those enrolled in degree programs. In its preliminary review of distance learning, the Institute for Higher Education Policy (1998) emphasized the need for…

The 1966 Invitational Conference on Testing Problems dealt with the innovations of the new age of flexibility and the problems of evaluating and preparing for them. Papers presented in Session I, Innovation and Evaluation, were: (1) "Innovation and Evaluation: In Whose Hands?" by Nils Y. Wessell; (2) "The Discovery and Development of Educational…

A void exists between the rapid growth of post-high school trade and technical education and the development of educational management tools for that area. Hoping to help fill this void, this research effort concentrated on the development of psychometric instruments useful in measuring achievements. Trade and technical areas involved in the study…