This exploratory study delves into the intricate landscape of student debt by spotlighting the demographics of non-returning university students who grapple with unpaid bursar bills, a type of shadow debt not visible in traditional assessments of loan borrowing and repayment. Analysis of such shadow debt at one regional Midwest institution reveals…

Vertical scales are intended to establish a common metric for scores on test forms targeting different levels of development in a specified domain. They are often constructed using common item, nonequivalent group designs that implicitly rely on the linking items being effectively free from differential item functioning (DIF) or the DIF being…

There is growing consensus that selection history strongly guides spatial attention and is distinct from current goals and physical salience. Here, we focused on target-location probability cueing: when the target is more likely to appear in one region, search performance gradually improves for targets appearing in that region. Probability cueing…

Rapid guessing (RG) is a form of non-effortful responding that is characterized by short response latencies. This construct-irrelevant behavior has been shown in previous research to bias inferences concerning measurement properties and scores. To mitigate these deleterious effects, a number of response time threshold scoring procedures have been…

Gender-inclusive language serves to recognize women and people with non-binary gender identities as part of the primary group, and it has been seen in various languages, including Arabic (Berger 2019), English (Berger 2019; Mathews 1995), Hebrew (Berger 2019), Portuguese (Secretaria de Comunicação 2021), Spanish (Berger 2019; Guzmán Stein 2004),…

Checking for possible inconsistency between direct and indirect evidence is an important task in network meta-analysis. Recently, an evidence-splitting (ES) model has been proposed, that allows separating direct and indirect evidence in a network and hence assessing inconsistency. A salient feature of this model is that the variance for…

Terminology has historically played a pivotal role within the field of developmental education and learning assistance. The language used to describe the field's people or define the work of the field is much more than mere semantics, though, especially as field-outsiders have exerted power over the field's identity through politics, policy, and…

The "LFK" index has been promoted as an improved method to detect bias in meta-analysis. Putatively, its performance does not depend on the number of studies in the meta-analysis. We conducted a simulation study, comparing the "LFK" index test to three standard tests for funnel plot asymmetry in settings with smaller or larger…

The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to understand the perceptions of fire service employees about generational conflict within fire service organizations across the United States. The findings of the study could allow fire service organization leaders to develop better conflict resolution practices related to generational…

Motivational (i.e., appetitive or aversive) cues can bias value-based decisions by affecting either direction and intensity of instrumental actions. Despite several findings describing important interindividual differences in these biases, whether biological sex can also play a role is still up to debate. By comparing females and males in both…

Peer assessment has been widely studied as a replacement for traditional evaluation, not only by reducing the professor's workload but mainly by benefiting students' engagement and learning. Although several works successfully validate its accuracy and fairness, more research must be done on how students' pre-existing social relationships affect…

Background: Knowledge about how disability professionals understand ableism may provide insight into the production of inequalities. The aim of this study was to examine how disability professionals understand ableism. Methods: We asked 347 disability professionals, all of whom worked with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities,…

Discrimination has become a significant presenting concern among college students that is strongly correlated with distress, social isolation, and suicidal ideation, even after counseling treatment (Center for Collegiate Mental Health, 2023). Over the past several years, the surge in reported incidents of antisemitism on college campuses has…

Oblique bifactor models, where group factors are allowed to correlate with one another, are commonly used. However, the lack of research on the statistical properties of oblique bifactor models renders the statistical validity of empirical findings questionable. Therefore, the present study took the first step to examine the statistical properties…

The low transfer-out and degree completion rates amongst community college students transferring to four-year institutions demonstrates an issue that leaders within higher education should seek to address. In investigating the challenges transfer students encounter, I discovered that undergraduate students transferring from a community college to…