Objective: To examine the mediational significance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the development of eating disorder symptomatology following sexually traumatic experiences. Method: Seventy-one victims of sexual trauma and 25 control subjects completed interviews and questionnaires assessing eating disorder psychopathology and…

Loans are a central component of college finance, yet research has generated a dearth of strong evidence of their effect on student choices. This article examines challenges to causal modeling regarding the effects of borrowing and the prospects of indebtedness on students' college-going behaviors. Statistical estimates of causal effects are…

Although there is consensus among medical educators that students must receive training in the biomedical sciences, little is known regarding the role of biomedical knowledge in diagnosis. The present paper presents two studies examining the role of biomedical knowledge, specifically knowledge of causal mechanisms, in novice diagnosticians. In…

Much research has highlighted incoherent implications of judgmental heuristics, yet other findings have demonstrated high correspondence between predictions and outcomes. At the same time, judgment has been well modeled in the form of as if linear models. Accepting the probabilistic nature of the environment, the authors use statistical tools to…

Understanding the particulate nature of matter (PNM) is vital for participating in many areas of science. We assessed 11 students' atomic/molecular-level explanations of real-world phenomena after their participation in a modelling-based PNM unit. All 11 students offered a scientifically acceptable model regarding atomic/molecular behaviour in…

This study evaluated and described student perceptions of a course in agroecology to determine if participants experienced changed perceptions and behaviors resulting from the Agroecosystems Analysis course. A triangulation validating quantitative data mixed methods approach included a written survey comprised of both quantitative and open-ended…

Policy problems like "What should we do about global warming?" are ill-defined in large part because we do not agree on a system to represent them the way we agree Algebra problems should be represented by equations. As a first step toward building a policy deliberation tutor, we investigated: (a) whether causal diagrams help students learn to…

This study questions whether administrative location of an academic department influences the qualitative nature of its educational output, as measured by the distribution of field choices among graduating students. To address this question, the author recorded curriculum vitae data on 661 economics PhD candidates, all of whom were on the Spring…

In the last few decades, the implementation of information technology has given rise to several organizational training needs that have to be satisfied, in order to empower organizational IT performance. The users of new technologies have to be trained quickly and efficiently, and since they are usually distributed to different remote locations,…

Experimental designs are distinguished as the best method to respond to questions involving causality. The purpose of the present paper is to explicate the logic of experimental design and why it is so vital to questions that demand causal conclusions. In addition, types of internal and external validity threats are discussed. To emphasize the…

In behavioral research, interest is often in examining the degree to which the effect of an independent variable X on an outcome Y is mediated by an intermediary or mediator variable M. This article illustrates how generalized estimating equations (GEE) modeling can be used to estimate the indirect or mediated effect, defined as the amount by…

In this article welfare systems and support networks are empirically analyzed to determine which generate the highest level of subjective well-being among retired persons. Propositions derived from support network theories and national welfare system typologies have been analyzed using causal models that indicate the influence of the various…

In this essay, the author tries to look forward into the 21st century to divine three things: (i) What skills will researchers in the future need to solve the most pressing problems? (ii) What are some of the most likely candidates to be those problems? and (iii) What are some current areas of research that seem mined out and should not distract…

The Learning and Skills Network (LSN) has carried forward the initial work of the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) and the Centre for Excellence in Leadership (CEL) to develop a professional development framework for e-learning: This publication shares the experiences of staff and their good practice as they used LSN's Framework as…

The aim of this article is to investigate with high and low knowledge subjects in the scientific domain of the neuron, the way information should be presented and illustrated to promote the integration of new information. This fundamental process for learning was examined in two experiments using a primed recognition task. In the first study, the…