Voters in five states approved referenda making English their official language. The vote is used to assess racial, ethnic, economic, political, and cultural hypotheses. The racial and cultural hypotheses are not validated; the ethnic and class ones are partially supported; and the political hypothesis offers the most compelling explanation. (26…

Structure and meaning of efficacy were examined for 182 prospective teachers, and efficacy was related to beliefs about control and motivation. Results support competing formulations of efficacy as teacher efficacy and personal efficacy. Interaction of these factors makes important contributions to prediction of pupil control ideology and…

Studied whether individual differences in print exposure and exposure to other media can account for individual differences in acquired declarative knowledge, controlling for confounds between experience and ability. Results with 268 undergraduates (90 males and 178 females) suggest that exposure is a significant contributor to knowledge…

A study used factor analysis to categorize and describe learning strategies in 1,200 university students. Results are reported from the perspectives of information processing theory and social psychology, and specific implications for classroom practice are discussed. (44 references) (MSE)

A procedure for interpreting multiple-discrimination indices from a multidimensional item-response theory analysis is described and demonstrated with responses of 1,635 high school students to a multiple-choice test. The procedure consists of converting discrimination parameter estimates to direction cosines and analyzing the angular distances…

The reliability and validity of the Self-Esteem Inventory developed by S. C. Coopersmith (1975) were evaluated via item-total correlation, discriminant analysis, factor analysis, and analysis of variance of data for 352 Australian adults. The instrument had high internal consistency and discriminated well between subjects with high and low…

This article reports on interrelated measures of lifestyle quality for 20 severely mentally retarded adults in community settings. Size of the social networks and the number of family members were associated with frequency and variety of activities across home and community settings. Activity patterns were unrelated to number of members paid to…

Regression analysis and principal components analysis, which can be used to create perinatal risk profiles of neighborhoods within cities, were compared. Using census tract level low birthweight as the outcome variable, both methods identified factors identifying neighborhoods at risk. Both methods can be used to identify community characteristics…

Examined characteristics of perceived relational support from four key providers for 12- to 18-year-olds. Variable-centered factor analyses yielded five support dimensions, three specific to providers and two specific to provisions. Person-centered factor analyses identified five types of adolescents with different configurations of perceived…

Examined psychometric characteristics of three 17-item measures of child care worker job demands, job control, and job resources. Found that job demands scale had lower reliability than job control or job resources. Demonstrated known groups validity through conceptually meaningful pattern of differences between family childcare providers and…

Background: Research on children's emotional behaviour has been hampered by the lack of psychometric assessment scales. The present study reports on the construction and validation of a new self-report instrument to measure the emotional response styles of adolescents. Method: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out on the…

The question of whether creativity is content general or content specific is one of the most controversial issues in contemporary creativity research. Recent studies provide support for both positions, but the results of these investigations may be influenced by several factors, including the presence of a method effect (i.e., psychometric vs.…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the use of an existing instrument, the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES)(Taylor, Dawson & Fraser, 1995; Taylor, Fraser & Fisher, 1993, 1997), for providing insights into the classroom learning environments of beginning science teachers. In the first year of the study, the CLES was…

Although research indicates communication is important among information systems (IS) staff, users, and managers to ensure successful development projects, the ineffective communication skills of IS staff are often cited as a possible cause of failed IS projects. To develop effective systems, communication between IS users and systems developers…

The present study provides information on the reliability and validity of the Transracial Adoption Parenting Scale (TAPS), a multidimensional 36-item Likert-type scale that measures cultural competence among transracial adoptive (TRA) parents. The TAPS was theoretically developed and refined through feedback from experts in TRA adoption. A…