This article deals with the relationship between adults' free time and further education. More specifically, the paper addresses the question of whether there are similarities and analogies between the leisure time that adults dedicate to non-formal educational activities and free time per se. A structured questionnaire was used to examine the…

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) consistently report executive functioning (EF) deficits. This study investigates the factor structure of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) as reported by parents of children with ASD and typically developing children (TDC). BRIEFs for 411 children with ASD and 467…

Purpose: The aim of this study is to develop a psychometrically sound self-report scale of organizational memory. The scale is planned for use in future research to test the relationship between what employees know and their attitudes to passing on their knowledge. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 72 organizational memory scale items…

Grades 5/6 students in Melbourne reported the valuing of "achievement," "open-endedness," "relevance," "humanism," "ICT," and "openness" most in mathematics learning. Although prior research suggested that students in East Asia valued "achievement" most as well, there was an…

This case study describes a program of research that developed a new measure--the Adaptability Scale--and then tested this new measure through a set of substantive research questions and publications. Three phases of this research program are detailed: a measurement phase, a modeling phase, and a mediation phase. The aim of this case study is to…

Self-efficacy is a universal construct, but few validated measures exist for researchers in developing countries to use in assessing youths' perceptions of their ability to achieve academic success. This study examined the cross-cultural suitability and psychometric properties of an academic self-efficacy scale (ASES) adapted for the Ghanaian…

Metacognition encompasses knowledge and regulation that, through reflection, sustain problem solving behaviour. How metacognitive awareness is constructed from reflection on metacognitive knowledge and regulation and how these reflections enable metacognitive skills for Mathematics problem solving remain unclear. Three secondary schools…

The development of teacher professional learning communities (PLC) has attracted growing attention among practitioners, policy-makers and researchers. The aims of this study were to identify typologies of professional learning teams based on measures of professional learning engagement, and assess their linkages with teachers' value orientations.…

Understanding program components that contribute to positive youth outcomes following camp experiences can help program providers bring a greater level of intentionality to their efforts. The purposes of this study were twofold: (a) to develop reliable and valid measures of life skill development, elements of positive youth development (PYD), and…

Maternal responsive-didactic caregiving (RDC) and infant advanced object play were investigated in a sample of 400 mothers and their 10-month-old infants during video-recorded semi-structured play interactions. Three maternal behaviours: contingent response, cognitively stimulating language and autonomy-promoting speech were coded and infant…

This study investigated the views of teachers and learners regarding the timing of grammatical instruction, conceptualized as a distinction between isolated and integrated form-focused instruction (FFI) proposed by Spada and Lightbown (2008). Both types of FFI are described as taking place in primarily meaning-based communicative classrooms. They…

Linear factor analysis models used to examine constructs underlying the responses are not very suitable for dichotomous or polytomous response formats. The associated problems cannot be eliminated by polychoric or tetrachoric correlations in place of the Pearson correlation. Therefore, we considered parameters obtained from the NOHARM and FACTOR…

Purpose: This prospective study was designed to evaluate psychometric properties of the Activity Choice Index (ACI), a measure for assessing one's choice to engage in more effortful, physically active behaviors in the course of daily routines over less-demanding, sedentary behaviors, in a sample of overweight women. Method: The sample included 192…

The present study aims to map the life satisfaction of adolescents from ethnic minority/immigrant backgrounds in schools with high concentrations of co-ethnic peers by comparing them with their mainstream counterparts in Hong Kong. The life satisfaction of 1,522 students was measured by the validated Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction…

This study offers validity evidence for the Parental Academic Support Scale, a 16-item multidimensional measure that assesses support related to a child's academic performance, classroom behavior, preparation, hostile peer interactions, and health. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Parental Academic Support Scale (PASS) revealed a close model…