Across a variety of disciplines and areas of inquiry, reliable and valid measures are a cornerstone of quality research. This is the case because to have confidence in the findings of our studies, we must first have confidence in the quality of our measures. This article briefly reviews the literature on scale development and provides an empirical…

The Adaptive/Maladaptive Perfectionism Scale (AMPS) for children measures different dimensions of perfectionism. In this study, subscales derived from the AMPS were compared with results of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale (PHSCS) in a sample of fourth- and fifth-grade students (9 to 11 years old). The AMPS dimensions accounted for significant…

The early childhood educational field has garnered attention with initiatives to foster skill acquisition in young children prior to kindergarten entry. These initiatives, in conjunction with the rigorous demands of curricular reform and a burgeoning accountability movement, invoke questions regarding the adequacy of the instruments used to assess…

This paper reports on results of research from a 25-year program of studies investigating teacher-student relationships in secondary classrooms. The authors review the research that examines teaching from an interpersonal perspective using a communicative systems approach and propose a model to describe teacher-student relationships in terms of…

The concept of quality of life currently impacts program development, service delivery, management strategies, and outcome evaluation in the area of intellectual disabilities. Maryland uses peer interviewers to assess consumer-perceived quality of life among adult recipients of MR/DD services and supports. In this article we describe the survey…

The syntagmatic paradigmatic model is a distributed, memory-based account of verbal processing. Built on a Bayesian interpretation of string edit theory, it characterizes the control of verbal cognition as the retrieval of sets of syntagmatic and paradigmatic constraints from sequential and relational long-term memory and the resolution of these…

The authors investigated the effects of former learning experiences on how students adapt to challenging mathematics tasks. A distinction has been made between domain-specific variables (goal orientation, self-concept of mathematics ability) and task- (or context-) specific appraisals (estimated competence for, attractiveness and relevance of the…

Several trends are compelling educational psychologists towards a philosophy of assessment that is asset-based and strength focused. This article shares the results from a study that explored perceptions about asset-based assessment in Educational Psychology in South Africa. Three focus groups were held and four main themes emerged from the…

We examined the interrater reliability of the "Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths-Mental Health" (CANS-MH) scale among researchers and between researchers and clinicians. All children presenting to a treatment facility for either protective or mental health needs were eligible to be included in the study. As part of standard assessment…

A new measure of women's relationships, the Relational Health Indices (RHI), comprises three scales that assess growth-fostering connections with peers, mentors, and communities. The RHI was developed using the Relational Model (Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, Surrey, 1991; Miller & Stiver, 1997), a theory of women's psychological development.…

Background: Debates about the developmental origins of adult face processing could be directly addressed if a clear infant neural marker could be identified. Previous research with infants remains open to criticism regarding the control stimuli employed. Methods: We recorded ERPs from adults and 3-month-old infants while they watched faces and…

Assessment of the overarching self-regulatory mechanisms, or executive functions, in any age group is challenging, in part due to the complexity of this domain, in part due to their dynamic essence, and in part due to the inextricable links between these central processes and the associated domain-specific processes, such as language, motor…

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Psycho-educational Profile-Revised (PEP-R). The Chinese PEP-R (CPEP-R) was administered to 63 preschool children with symptoms of autistic disorder recruited from special child-care centers in Hong Kong. Results showed that the scales of the CPEP-R…

Despite anecdotal evidence suggesting that air travel is personally demanding, little research has examined air travel stress. To address these issues, the author developed and evaluated the 1st known measure of air travel stress-the Air Travel Stress Scale-in 3 studies. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis indicated 3 components: (a)…

The purpose of this article is to provide a foundation for the development of evidence-based guidelines for the assessment of personality disorders, focusing in particular on integrated assessment strategies. The general strategy recommended herein is to first administer a self-report inventory to alert oneself to the potential presence of…