Background: Critical thinking is one of the very highest orders of cognitive abilities and a key competency in higher education. Asking questions is an important component of rich learning experiences, structurally embedded in the operations of critical thinking. Our clear sense is that critical thinking and, within that, critical questioning, is…

The current study examined interactions among genetic influences and children's early environments on the development of externalizing behaviors from 18 months to 6 years of age. Participants included 233 families linked through adoption (birth parents and adoptive families). Genetic influences were assessed by birth parent temperamental…

A successful transition from kindergarten to 1st grade requires a positive combination of multiple dimensions of child competence. Using latent class analysis, we simultaneously examined the academic skills, work attitude, and social/behavioral competence of a large sample of Dutch kindergarten children to identify profiles of kindergarten…

Aggressive behaviour in school-aged children presents a significant challenge for society. If not managed, it can result in adverse academic, social, emotional, and behavioural outcomes for the child. In addition, it can create stress for families and become a significant burden for the community as these children reach adolescence and adulthood,…

The authors empirically examine the effectiveness of an intervention program designed to facilitate interest in cyber science among high school students (N = 60). Pretest-posttest and mediation designs were used to model self-report data that were collected at pre-camp, during a cyber-related task at mid-camp, and at post-camp. An analysis of…

Recent research suggests that emotional dysfunction in psychiatric disorders can be reflected in autonomic abnormalities. The present study examines sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous system activity in individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) before, during, and following a social stressor task. Data were obtained…

For valid decision making, it is essential to both the person being measured and the person or organization that is having the person measured that the observed scores adequately represent the underlying trait. This study deals with person-fit analysis of polytomous item scores to detect unusual patterns of sum scores on subsets of items. This…

Interests, personality, and values figure prominently in work motivation, yet little research has examined the combined influence of these factors on vocational behavior. The present study therefore examined relationships among these variables in a sample of 282 medical students (169 women, 113 men) who responded to the Strong Interest Inventory,…

Counselors who assess persons with multiple sclerosis (MS) using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; T. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 1989) may find scale elevations on Scales 1, 2, 3, and 8. These elevations may be due, at least in part, to specific questions on the MMPI-2 that…

College students (308 undergraduates) completed the Five Factor Inventory and the Academic Motivations Scale, and reported their college grade point average (GPA). A correlation analysis revealed an interesting pattern of significant relationships. Further, regression analyses indicated that conscientiousness and openness explained 17% of the…

Longitudinal studies of entrepreneurial career development are rare, and current knowledge of self-employment patterns and their relationships with individual difference characteristics is limited. In this study, the authors analyzed employment data from a subsample of 514 participants from the German Socio-Economic Panel study (1984-2008).…

In presenting the basic data of the article the authors note that the topic itself, the sociology of the school grade, is determined by the overall context of timely and relevant issues that have to do with rating the success of the educational process. In the past few years the array of problems relating to educational evaluation has been studied…

Over the past few decades, college student survey response rates have been declining. This is a problematic trend because student survey data are used extensively in endeavors such as accreditation, institutional improvement, and scholarly research. While low survey response rates are not necessarily a problem, they will be if they impact the…

The 21st century economy is driven by information and communication technologies (ICT). This change has made innovation, manufacturing and production of products and services, rather than manufacturing of material goods, the driving force of economies of leading countries (Wagner, 2008). Due to this shift, today's 21st century society and…

Institutions of Higher Education are challenged to educate an increasing, diverse ethnic minority population. This study examines (1) if the theory of the Big Five personality traits as a predictor of the cultural intelligence theoretical model remains constant with ethnic minority college students attending a southeastern United States…