In winter of 2004, the Sociology Department at California State University-Bakersfield (CSUB) conducted a student assessment using an embedded assessment technique--a technique wherein a class assignment serves as an assessment tool. The authors conducted the embedded assessment for their Five-Year Program Review. Thus, similar to many…

Reliance on subjective grant proposal review methods leads private philanthropies to underfund mental health programs, even when foundations have mental health focuses. This article describes a private mental health foundation's efforts to increase the objectivity of its proposal review process by developing a reliable, valid proposal rating form.…

The purpose of this study was to (1) create a predictive model that would correctly identify men at greatest risk of dropping out of a court-mandated, batterer intervention program; and, (2) explore the creation of such a logistic regression model using a set of instruments that were different from those used in previous research. Method: The…

It is not what is taught that has the most influence on students' study behaviour, but rather what is assessed. Computer-assisted assessment offers the possibility of widening the scope of the material that is assessed, without placing excessive burdens on either staff or students. This article describes a computer-assisted assessment scheme…

Finding accurate predictors of tertiary academic performance, specifically for disadvantaged students, is essential because of budget constraints and the need of the labour market to address employment equity. Increased retention, throughput and decreased dropout rates are vital. When making admission decisions, the under preparedness of students…

This is the second of two papers investigating the adjustment process in a designated group of expatriates, (teachers), who have severed ties with their home country and employer. In the first paper we examined the effect of self-efficacy and flexibility within this adjustment process, revealing the significance of self-efficacy but failing to…

An introductory CS1 course presents problems for educators and students due to students' diverse background in programming knowledge and exposure. Students who enroll in CS1 also have different expectations and motivations. Prompted by the curricular guidelines for undergraduate programmes in computer science released in 2001 by the ACM/IEEE, and…

The purpose of this study was to develop the Scale for Program Facilitators (SPF) to assess the effectiveness of after school achievement programs through four steps: (a) identification of a theoretical framework, (b) formulation of the initial scale, (c) test of content validity, and (d) conducting confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). A…

Objectives. This study was designed to adapt and validate a Spanish translation of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) for the assessment of positive life changes following the stressful experiences of immigration. Method. A cross-cultural equivalence model was used to pursue semantic, content, conceptual, and technical equivalence.…

The Youth Self Report (YSR) is a popular and widely used instrument assessing adolescent emotional and behavioral functioning. The goals of the present study were to address some of the limitations of the YSR, to examine its factor structure and equivalence across four racial/ethnic groups, and to determine if another combination of items could…

Evaluating the effects of interventions is among the most critical issues faced by the field of human resource development today. This study addresses the potential of multisource feedback for training evaluation. The central research question is whether or not it is possible to measure change in work behavior, as a result of training, with…

Empirical evidence of no age-related decline in life satisfaction (LS) in old age contrasts with frequently observed declines in the objective quality of elder people's lives and has therefore been labelled a "paradox" and interpreted in terms of stability of LS in the respective gerontological discussion. However, as this evidence was…

Since publication use of the WHOQOL-Bref has rapidly risen. However, as yet no population norms have been published as a reference point against which researchers can interpret their findings. This study provides preliminary population norms for this purpose. Randomly sampled community residents from two studies were pooled and used to examine the…

Based on the closeness of kinship relationships, a 4-layer household-based convoy is proposed for the study of intergenerational support exchanges. It first separates co-residing family members from non-coresiding family members with whom they have frequent contact and places them in the innermost and next-innermost circles of an individual's…

Because of increased stress conditions in college students, updated psychometrics of the Perceived Stress Scale, 10-item version (PSS-10; S. Cohen & G. Williamson, 1988) are necessary. Participants were 281 undergraduates at 3 public universities. An exploratory factor analysis revealed a 2-factor structure measuring Perceived Helplessness and…