Many students do not receive the adequate academic and social support during their enrollment in a higher education institution that could positively impact their abilities to succeed in college (Astin, 1984; Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Nora, 1987; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). These support systems can be viewed as providing a holistic mentoring…

Psychologists interviewed direct-care staff using a battery of assessment measures including the autism spectrum disorders-diagnosis for intellectually disabled adults (ASD-DA), the Diagnostic Assessment for the Severely Handicapped-II (DASH-II), the Matson Evaluation of Social Skills for Individuals with Severe Retardation (MESSIER), the…

Involvement of students and adult employees into the decisions that affect their education and employment can improve their transition into supported employment. One means for increasing involvement into these decisions is to gain their input into performance evaluations and support needs. The "Job Observation and Behavior Scale: Opportunity for…

This article reviews issues involved with using norm-referenced measures within an intervention validity model. Methodological examination of intervention validity has become more important as intervention methodologies have become part of federal legislation. However, current practice and federal guidelines often implicitly portray a dichotomy…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires all states to assess the English proficiency of English language learners each school year. Under Title I and Title III of No Child Left Behind, states are required to measure the annual growth of students' English language development in reading, listening, writing, and speaking and in comprehension…

What is the nature of latent predictors that facilitate diagnostic classification? Rupp and Templin (this issue) suggest that these predictors should be multidimensional, categorical variables that can be combined in various ways. Diagnostic Classification Models (DCM) typically use multiple categorical predictors to classify respondents into…

Hierarchical models of agrammatism propose that sentence production deficits can be accounted for in terms of clausal syntactic structure [Friedmann, N., & Grodzinsky, Y. (1997). "Tense and agreement in agrammatic production: Pruning the syntactic tree." "Brain and Language, 56", 397-425; Hagiwara, H. (1995). "The breakdown of functional…

Objectives: The objective of this study was to examine the nature of individual attitudes toward sex offenders. Because the term "sex offender" tends to evoke strong emotions, and given that open-ended self reports tend to be highly subjective, particularly in the context of such pointed terminology, this study sought to develop an attitude…

Objective: The Evaluation Self-Efficacy Scale (ESE) is being developed as an outcomes assessment instrument for social work courses focusing on evaluation. Method: This scale, based on social cognitive theory, was pretested, revised, and then used with a final sample of 85 master's-level students in the original study. Using a single-group,…

This article argues that a mixed methods approach is useful in understanding the complexity that underlies teachers' commitment to environmental education. Using sequential and concurrent procedures, the authors demonstrate how different methodological approaches highlighted different aspects of teacher commitment. The quantitative survey examined…

It is essential for all students to be ready for college and career when they graduate from high school. Postsecondary educators expect high school graduates to be prepared academically for success in postsecondary education, which in turn influences success in the work world. Employers continue to call for workers to have the tools needed to…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the consistency of students' behavior regarding their pace of actions over sessions within an online course. Pace in a session is defined as the number of logged actions divided by session length (in minutes). Log files of 6,112 students were collected, and datasets were constructed for examining pace…

Although the development of policy towards inclusive education in the UK is well advanced, very little is known about the social outcomes of existing inclusive arrangements in primary settings. A recent study sought to fill this gap by systematically investigating the social impacts of inclusion on children accredited with Special Educational…

This article concentrates on the validity and reliability of portfolio assessment as used in pre-service teacher education. It is not possible to make general pronouncements about the validity of portfolio assessment in pre-service teacher education as there are multiple portfolio applications. The validity depends on the purpose, namely the…

The article discusses a scenario-based dieting self-efficacy scale, the DIET-SE, developed from dieter's inventory of eating temptations (DIET). The DIET-SE consists of items that describe scenarios of eating temptations for a range of dieting situations, including high-caloric food temptations. Four studies assessed the psychometric properties of…