Construct validity of the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire (OSIQ) was studied in a sample of 194 normal Finnish adolescents from 14 to 16 years of age. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the hierarchical structure of adolescents' self-image with 5 lower-order factors loading on a single higher-order factor. Lower-order factors were…

Objective: To develop a reliable and valid parent-report screening instrument for mania, based on DSM-IV symptoms. Method: A 21-item Child Mania Rating Scale-Parent version (CMRS-P) was completed by parents of 150 children (42.3% female) ages 10.3 plus or minus 2.9 years (healthy controls = 50; bipolar disorder = 50;…

The increasing availability and performance of computer-based testing has prompted more research on the automatic assessment of language and speaking proficiency. In this investigation, we evaluated the feasibility of using an off-the-shelf speech-recognition system for scoring speaking prompts from the LanguEdge field test of 2002. We first…

Objective: To describe associations among socioeconomic conditions and dietary patterns of Botswana elderly. Design: Secondary analysis from a cross-sectional nationwide survey. Participants: Subjects (N = 1086, 60-99 years old) were selected after multistage sampling. Main Outcome Measures: Dietary patterns were dependent variables; health and…

Although some research data support the view that a "caring learning community" is important to student outcomes, there is a lack of literature describing the administrative behaviors that create such a community. This paper describes findings of a study that identified the behaviors used by teachers to create a caring learning…

Taxing situations that threaten the administrator's sense of self-efficacy meaningfully account for burnout in human-service professionals. This paper presents findings of a study that hypothesized that environmental or role stressors could be classified as task, organization, and relations stressors, each pertaining to a different domain of the…

Many multiple aptitude test batteries, including the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT), used for assigning or classifying individuals to jobs or for occupational counseling have subtests covering a broad range of content such as science, mathematics, reading, vocabulary, perceptual, mechanical, or technical knowledge. This content reflects…

This study was conducted to test the validity of previously developed theories as to why individuals select teaching as a career and to determine whether the orientation of preservice and inservice teachers differs regarding reasons for choosing the teaching profession. A 58-item instrument, "Orientations for Teaching Survey," was designed, with…

Issues related to between-class and within-class decomposition of achievement variance and the change of this decomposition over the course of the eighth-grade were examined using the Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS, 1985), a study in which there was a nested or hierarchical data structure of students within classes, within schools,…

This report examines the opinions of 726 registered voters in 5 small, rural mid-west school districts. The purposes of the study were: (1) to assess citizens' satisfaction with the school districts' programs and services; (2) to indicate strengths and weaknesses in the school districts' programs and services; (3) to identify problems facing the…

There is a natural tension between experimentally designed studies and case studies, which differ in that they are not concerned with the interaction of variables in the quantitative and statistical sense. This paper describes a study that was not experimentally designed, but its major findings were generalizable to the overall population of…

The adequacy of several approaches to estimation of proficiency distributions for the Trial State Assessment (TSA) in eighth grade mathematics of the National Assessment of Educational Progress was examined. These approaches are more restrictive than the estimation procedures originally used, with the same kind of plausible-values approach that…

A longitudinal study examined the contributions of early language ability, home characteristics, and emerging knowledge about literacy to children's later decoding and comprehension ability. The study followed 127 children from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of grade 3 (when 83 were left). Subjects attended schools in a small, rural,…

Six separate studies were conducted using judgments from academic and practitioner experts to determine the knowledge structure of the Certified Financial Planner Professional Education Program (i.e., the organization of discipline topics and the relationships among them). The program consists of six sequential financial planning knowledge…

To change the way classroom discipline and student discipline are examined, a two-study investigation, rather than focusing on student noncompliance and other types of student misbehaviors, examined teachers themselves as potential sources of instructional and/or motivational problems in the college classroom. The first study was designed to…