The aims of this study were to investigate the effects of discrepancies between teachers' perceptions of students' motivation and students' reports of their motivation on math and English grades and to identify possible gender and ethnic differences. Participants included 215 low-income, ethnic-minority students and their teachers in academically…

Poor language skills can have a negative effect on a developing child if not identified early. Current strategies to identify families with children who may need additional support are limited, and may not detect child language problems before they become entrenched. The present study explores observed indices of parental language as a means of…

Academic self-concept has been conceptualized as a multidimensional and hierarchical construct. Previous research has mostly focused on its multidimensionality, distinguishing between verbal and mathematical self-concept domains, and only a few studies have examined the factorial structure within specific self-concept domains. The present study…

Prior research has shown that the agreement between teacher and student ratings of instructional quality is, at best, moderate, and the associations between measures of instructional quality and outcomes such as standardized achievement are typically small and somewhat mixed across both perspectives. One explanation for these low-to-moderate…

Q methodology was used to determine attitudes and opinions about e-books among a group of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates at Miami University of Ohio. Oral interviews formed the basis for a collection of opinion statements concerning e-books versus print. These statements were then ranked by a second group of research participants.…

The major purpose of this study was to examine the construct validity of English Language Teachers Competency Test (ELT-CT) designed by Pishghadam, Baghaei and Shahriari (2010). In this study, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to examine the construct validity of the test. The results have shown that the underlying factors of the test are…

Work readiness is a relatively new concept which has emerged in the literature as a selection criterion for predicting graduate potential. Its definition and validity however, is contentious. To address this issue, the current study aimed to identify the attributes and characteristics that comprise work readiness and develop a scale to assess…

This article presents the idea that distance delivery in social work education is seen as an interaction between four constructs: the student, the setting in which the education is delivered, the educational content, and the expected educational outcomes. To fully understand these interactions, clear operational indicators, well established in…

One's knowledge, perception, and attitude are fundamental in determining how one behaves regarding environmental hazards. While science has made great strides in promoting environmental health, threats still exist, largely due to individual actions in response to potential health hazards. Undergraduate students (n = 395) enrolled in an…

The Motivators of and Barriers to Health-Smart Behaviors Inventory (MB-HSBI) was developed for use in identifying self-reported motivators of and barriers to the following health-promoting behaviors (called "health-smart behaviors") that should occur daily to help promote health and overcome illnesses/diseases: eating a healthy…

The structure of the Hypomanic Personality Scale was explored in a sample of young adults (N = 884); resulting structures were validated on subsamples with measures of personality traits, internalizing symptoms, and externalizing behaviors. Hierarchical cluster analysis and estimates of general factor saturation suggested the presence of a weak…

The Behavior Assessment System for Children, Second Edition (BASC-2) Behavioral and Emotional Screening System Parent Form (BESS Parent; Kamphaus & Reynolds, 2007) is a recently developed instrument designed to identify behavioral and emotional risk in students. To describe the underlying factor structure for this instrument, exploratory (EFA)…

The Problem-Solving Inventory (PSI; Heppner & Petersen, 1982) was developed to assess perceived problem-solving abilities. Using confirmatory factor analysis, results supported a bilevel model of PSI scores with a sample of 164 Mexican American students. Findings support the cultural validity of PSI scores with Mexican Americans and enhance the…

Environmental stewardship networks flourish across Australia. Although the environment benefits, this article looks to identify what volunteers draw from their stewardship. The authors adapted 16 questions that purportedly tap environmental stewardship motivation and administered them to a convenience sample of 318 university students and then to…

Most psychological theories treat the features of objects as being fixed and immediately available to observers. However, novel objects have an infinite array of properties that could potentially be encoded as features, raising the question of how people learn which features to use in representing those objects. We focus on the effects of…