This dissertation is composed of four stand-alone yet linked chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of the constructs of adaptive behavior and support needs and their evolution throughout history. There is also a review of the limited literature available examining the relationship between the two constructs that…

The present study aims to examine the mediating effects of achievement emotions between action control and learning strategies. Two hundreds and twenty-six undergraduates (125 males and 101 females) participated to complete a questionnaire consisting of three scales. To analyze the data, path analyses and structural equation modeling were used.…

This study examined reliability and validity of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA), based on samples of parents and teachers' ratings of 1,145 entering kindergartners in the Southwest. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that DECA presented good reliability and validity for manifest variables, corroborating previous findings. Three…

Drawing on data from a three-wave longitudinal study, the present research examined predictors of young adults' intentions to participate in politics and their actual political activities while referring to the broader assumptions of the theory of planned behavior. The analyses were based on a sample of university students from the federal state…

Traditional methods of assessing construct stability are reviewed and longitudinal mean and covariance structures (LMACS) analysis, a modern approach, is didactically illustrated using psychological entitlement data. Measurement invariance and latent variable stability results are interpreted, emphasizing substantive implications for educators and…

Few studies in medical education have studied effect of quality of motivation on performance. Self-Determination Theory based on quality of motivation differentiates between Autonomous Motivation (AM) that originates within an individual and Controlled Motivation (CM) that originates from external sources. To determine whether Relative Autonomous…

Meaning in statistics is fundamentally related to contexts, which poses the challenge to teach statistics in contexts, taking everyday reasoning as the basis from which to develop statistical reasoning. I investigate how 13 teachers-as-learners in an introductory statistics course co-structure their situation models toward a shared real model that…

Learning is critical to both economic prosperity and social cohesion. E-government learning, which refers to the government's use of web-based technologies to facilitate learning about subjects that are useful to citizens, is relatively new, relevant, and potentially cost-effective. This work proposes and verifies that the technology acceptance…

The present study tested the dual-component model of working memory capacity (WMC) by examining estimates of primary memory and secondary memory from an immediate free recall task. Participants completed multiple measures of WMC and general intellectual ability as well as multiple trials of an immediate free recall task. It was demonstrated that…

This article proposes a theoretical model of work-family enrichment and tests the mediating role of work engagement. The inclusion of work engagement extends prior research on work-family interface, and allows for examination of the effects of role resources (job resources, family support) on work-family enrichment. A two-wave survey was conducted…

Globalization brings change in all aspect of human life, including in how job and organizations operate. These changes create strain and stress not only among employee at business organization, but also among academic staff. The dean of faculty or department at university has important role in prevent the effects of job stress among the academic…

Social, economic, violence, political, and gun access predictors of suicide and gun suicide were examined via sociological autopsy. The model predicting suicide rates overall had the best results, X[superscript 2](9, N = 50) = 5.279 (CMIN, the goodness of fit statistic that represents the minimum discrepancy between the unrestricted sample…

In addition to evaluating a structural equation model (SEM) as a whole, often the model parameters are of interest and confidence intervals for those parameters are formed. Given a model with a good overall fit, it is entirely possible for the targeted effects of interest to have very wide confidence intervals, thus giving little information about…

Working memory is crucial for many higher-level cognitive functions, ranging from mental arithmetic to reasoning and problem solving. Likewise, the ability to learn and categorize novel concepts forms an indispensable part of human cognition. However, very little is known about the relationship between working memory and categorization, and…

Empowerment theory provides both a value orientation for community-based research and practice, and a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating interventions. One critical question in empowerment theory involves whether a reciprocal (bidirectional) relationship exists between community participation (CP) and psychological empowerment…