One of the key ideas of evidence-centered assessment design (ECD) is that task features can be deliberately manipulated to change the psychometric properties of items. ECD identifies a number of roles that task-feature variables can play, including determining the focus of evidence, guiding form creation, determining item difficulty and…

A growing body of research documents the positive outcomes of research experiences for undergraduates, including increased persistence in science. Study of undergraduate lab learning experiences has demonstrated that the design of the experience influences the extent to which students report ownership of the project and that project ownership is…

C. R. Snyder conceptualized hope as a cognitive construct that reflects people's motivation and capacity to strive toward personally relevant goals. Using this definition, Snyder and colleagues developed and validated the Hope Scale (HS). This study is the first study to examine the psychometric properties of the HS in a sample of high school…

The study of competencies in student affairs began more than 4 decades ago, but no instrument currently exists to measure competencies broadly. This study builds upon previous research by developing an instrument to measure student affairs competencies. Results not only validate the competencies espoused by NASPA and ACPA, but also suggest adding…

Purpose: In this article, the authors examine the developmental continuity from prelinguistic communication to kindergarten age in language and working memory capacity. Method: Following work outlining 6 groups of children with different trajectories of early communication development (ECD; Määttä, Laakso, Tolvanen, Ahonen, & Aro, 2012), the…

Almost half of American adults struggle with reading but there is a dearth of reading-related assessments for these adults. In turn, researchers and practitioners use assessments designed for children with these adults. This study examined the psychometric and descriptive attributes of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)…

What happens when standardised literacy assessments travel globally? The paper presents an ethnographic account of adult literacy assessment events in rural Mongolia. It examines the dynamics of literacy assessment in terms of the movement and re-contextualisation of test items as they travel globally and are received locally by Mongolian…

The goal of this paper was to critically review and evaluate five common social-emotional and behavioral screeners: Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (Kamphaus and Reynolds 2007), Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment System (McDougal et al. 2011), Social Skills Improvement System Performance Screening Guide (Elliott and Gresham…

This study aimed to adapt the Resilience Youth Development Module (RYDM) and assess its psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency and convergent validity in Greek elementary students. Participants (N = 346) completed a battery of self-report questionnaires, including the RYDM, School Connectedness Scale, and Strengths and…

Homework is a requirement for most school-age children, but research on the benefits and drawbacks of homework is limited by lack of psychometrically sound measurement of homework performance. This study examined the structural and convergent validity of scores from the newly developed Homework Performance Questionnaire -- Teacher Scale (HPQ-T).…

Valid and reliable measurement of teaching is essential to evaluating and improving teacher effectiveness and advancing large-scale policy-relevant research in education (Raudenbush & Sadoff, 2008). One increasingly common component of teaching evaluations is the direct observation of teachers in their classrooms. Classroom observations have…

Background: Marijuana represents the most widely used illicit drug on college campuses. Repeated use can impair students' academic, emotional, and physical success and can lead to chronic diseases. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate existing literature on the associated effects of marijuana use on U.S. college students' academic…

Purpose: Our purpose was to explore the validity and reliability of the German Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS-G; Thomas-Stonell, Oddson, Robertson, & Rosenbaum, 2010, 2012), which is an authorized adaptation of the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (Thomas-Stonell et al., 2010) tool, which measures…

Higher education is attracting more participation from an increasingly diverse student body. This diversity invites concerns on effective instructional delivery as the extent of students' engagement in learning now varies widely. Anecdotes on students' "undesirable" dispositions in course participation are not uncommon in higher…

Purpose: This article reports on an examination of the psychometric properties of the 28-item Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28). Methods: Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, Cronbach's a, "t"-tests, correlations, and multivariate analysis of variance were applied to data collected via interviews from 593…