This article describes the development and field-testing of an observational tool, the Volunteer Tutor Instructional Practices Checklist. It is an example of action research in a clinical setting and will be of interest to all educators, including special education and reading center directors, in the training and ongoing supervision of community…

Objective: To investigate the psychometric properties of the BMSLSS among 522 college students. Methods: Internal consistency reliability explored scale reliability, factor analysis explored construct validity, known-groups validity was assessed by use of items from the National College Youth Risk Behavior Survey and Harvard National Survey of…

The authors describe the development of the California Brief Multicultural Competence Scale (CBMCS). The 21-item CBMCS was derived from principal component analysis, item content validated by a panel of experts, and confirmatory factor analyses. Several studies provided internal consistency, subscale intercorrelations, criterion-related…

Background: Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of CBCL, TRF, and YSR were understudied. This study aimed at examining their test-retest reliability and criterion validity. Methods: Three Chinese community and clinic samples were recruited in Hong Kong. The parents, teachers, and youths respectively completed the CBCL, TRF, and YSR.…

This study is a means of validating the Harter's Social Support Scale for Children on a sample of Mexican and Mexican American ninth-grade students to assist researchers and practitioners to more accurately assess this variable on this specific Latino group. The psychometric information was obtained through intercorrelations and Cronbach's alpha.…

To investigate the reliability and validity of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS), 28 youth aged 6 to 17 years with Tourette's syndrome (TS) participated in the study. Data included clinician reports of tics and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) severity, parent reports of tics, internalizing and externalizing problems, and child reports…

Researchers have a long-standing interest in better understanding why some students avoid challenging academic course work at the risk of harming their academic standing, whereas others are willing to pursue these types of challenges. The Academic Hardiness Scale (AHS) was developed to better understand characteristics that may differentiate these…

This study explores the use of multiple measures to enhance the validity and reliability of inferences about school and district effectiveness. Using data from the state of Ohio, a framework for combining measures is applied to examine the individual and collective impact of multiple measures on both the federal AYP designations and state ratings.…

A 25-item self-report instrument was constructed to measure intrinsic motivation for academic work in the first-year student population. The instrument was based on a taxonomy of four types of intrinsic motivators: challenge, control, curiosity, and career outlook. The aim of this study was to provide reliability and validity evidence for the…

The Math Essential Skills Screener--Upper Elementary Version (MESS-U) is part of a series of screening tests designed to help identify students ages 9-11 who are at risk for mathematics failure. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, item analysis, decision efficiency, convergent validity and factorial validity of the MESS-U were studied…

The curriculum innovations in chemistry are often designed to address the important goals of improving student understanding and attitude, with assessment to determine the effects of these innovations. These analyses are psychometrically weak for several reasons, one reason being that the ability to look for the changes over time or for…

The purpose of this study is to develop an attitude scale toward Internet-based learning (IBL) and to investigate whether attitude levels of Turkish distance learners in an IBL environment differ according to their demographical characteristics (i.e. age, gender, marital status, parental status, employment status, grade point average (GPA).…

This study had two aims. The first was to validate further Sternberg's theory of mental self-government in a Chinese cultural setting. The second was to investigate the relationship between teaching styles and teachers' characteristics. Two hundred and three (64 males, 139 females) primary and secondary school teachers from Shanghai, mainland…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the test-retest reliability and concurrent validity of the Flemish Physical Activity Computerized Questionnaire (FPACQ) in employed/unemployed and retired people. The FPACQ was developed to assess detailed information on several dimensions of physical activity and sedentary behavior over a usual week. A…

Pragmatic proficiency has been incorporated in the EFL teaching and testing syllabi in China, but the corresponding tests still focus on linguistic competence. The gap between the teaching and testing is mainly due to the lack of generally accepted measures of communicative abilities such as pragmatic competence. This study developed a…