On November 7, 2010, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) hosted a national executive forum during its annual strategic enrollment management conference. Titled "The College Rankings Debate and Future Implications: Assessing the Value of an Institution's Undergraduate Experience," the…

College rankings create much talk and discussion in the higher education arena. This love/hate relationship has not necessarily resulted in better rankings, but rather, more rankings. This paper looks at some of the measures and pitfalls of the current rankings systems, and proposes areas for improvement through a better focus on teaching and…

This study investigates measurement decision theory (MDT) as an underlying model for computer adaptive testing when the goal is to classify examinees into one of a finite number of groups. The first analysis compares MDT with a popular item response theory model and finds little difference in terms of the percentage of correct classifications. The…

In this study, we explore native and non-native syntactic processing, paying special attention to the language distance factor. To this end, we compared how native speakers of Basque and highly proficient non-native speakers of Basque who are native speakers of Spanish process certain core aspects of Basque syntax. Our results suggest that…

This reaction article comments on the major contribution titled "Motivation and Autonomy in Counseling, Psychotherapy, and Behavior Change: A Look at Theory and Practice." It first points out the article's strengths, the primary of which was to move the construct of motivation to the center of focus in the discussion of counseling. In addition,…

The proportion of students enrolled at university from the lowest quartile of socio-economic position has remained static at around 15% for at least the past 15 years (DEEWR, "Transforming Australia's higher education system," 2009). This paper argues that the apparent lack of progress towards equity of access has been exacerbated due to…

Accurate identification of at-risk kindergarten and 1st-grade students through early reading screening is an essential element of responsiveness to intervention models of reading instruction. The authors consider predictive validity and classification accuracy of early reading screening assessments with attention to sensitivity and specificity.…

Master Gardeners are very important in helping Extension deliver horticultural information to local citizens. The theoretical framework of the study reported here was based on Houle's Typology. The purpose was to develop an understanding of adult motivations to participate in the Florida Master Gardener program. The sampled population was 613…

The scripts of 288 television episodes were analysed to determine the extent to which vocabulary reoccurs in television programs from the same subgenres and unrelated television programs from different genres. Episodes from two programs from each of the following three subgenres of the American drama genre: medical, spy/action, and criminal…

Fourteen children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and fourteen age-matched typically-developing (TD) controls were tested on an adapted version of the Twenty Questions Task (Mosher and Hornsby in Studies in cognitive growth. Wiley, New York, pp 86-102, "1966") to examine effects of content, executive and verbal IQ factors on category use in…

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Form (MMPI-2 RF) was administered to 251 National Guard soldiers who had recently returned from deployment to Iraq. Soldiers were also administered questionnaires to identify posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). On the basis of responses to the…

The purposes of this paper are to outline seven types of qualitative data analysis techniques, to present step-by-step guidance for conducting these analyses via a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software program (i.e., NVivo9), and to present screenshots of the data analysis process. Specifically, the following seven analyses are…

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) provides a framework for describing behaviors by viewing them from three broad and different perspectives: (1) physiologic, physical, and psychological functions; (2) a person's engagement in functional life activities; and (3) their participation in social settings. The…

The purpose of this study was to determine the services required by students in special education programs and to estimate the cost of adequately funding special education in Taiwan. Questionnaires were administered to 300 special education teachers at the elementary school level to identify the services required. Thereafter, two focus group…

Deficits in understanding the mental state of others ("mind-reading") have been well documented in individuals with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD). However, it is unclear whether this deficit in social cognition differs between the subgroups of PDD defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text…