The potential influences of affective perceptions on cognitive engagement in learning, particularly with emotionally charged topics such as evolution, provide justification for acknowledging and assessing learners' attitudes toward content. One approach to determining students' attitudes toward a construct is to explicitly ask them to what degree…

Background: Diagnostics and care for people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and psychiatric disorders need to be improved. This can be done by using assessment instruments to routinely measure the nature and severity of psychiatric symptoms. Up until now, in the Netherlands, assessment measures are seldom used in the psychiatric care for this…

Higher education institutions are interested in the impact that they and concurrent life experiences may have on students' sustainability attitudes, but they lack formal processes to monitor changes. We used the NEP to monitor changes in students' ecological-worldviews. We were interested in what variation there would be in a multidisciplinary…

Institutional distance education goals reflective of policy can have an impact on practice. These goals have been noted as possibly being associated with improving access and outcomes for students with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to re-examine the association of institutional distance education goals with the frequency in which…

We report findings of an exploratory validation study of a revised instrument: the Student Risk Screening Scale-Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE). The SRSS-IE was modified to include seven additional items reflecting characteristics of internalizing behaviors, with proposed items generated from the current literature base, review of…

We examined the developmental sequence of letter name knowledge acquisition by children from 2 to five years of age. Data from 2 samples representing diverse regions, ethnicity, and socioeconomic backgrounds (ns=1074 and 500) were analyzed using item response theory (IRT) and differential item functioning techniques. Results from factor analyses…

Structural equation models are commonly used to estimate relationships between latent variables. Almost universally, the fitted models specify that these relationships are linear in form. This assumption is rarely checked empirically, largely for lack of appropriate diagnostic techniques. This article presents and evaluates two procedures that can…

The present study reports the adaptation and validation of the Teacher Emotional Labour Strategy Scale (TELSS) as tested on samples of 633 Beijing teachers and 648 Chongqing teachers in Chinese mainland. Results show that the 13-item TELSS adapted for this study had good internal consistency on three subscales which measure three types of teacher…

It is a well-established finding that the central executive is fractionated in at least three separable component processes: Updating, Shifting, and Inhibition of information (Miyake et al., 2000). However, the fractionation of the central executive among the elderly has been less well explored, and Miyake's et al. latent structure has not yet…

Data validating the Autism Parenting Stress Index (APSI) is presented for 274 children under age six. Cronbach's alpha was 0.827. As a measure of parenting stress specific to core and co-morbid symptoms of autism, the APSI is unique. It is intended for use by clinicians to identify areas where parents need support with parenting skills, and to…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES). The Chinese version of BES was administered to a sample (n = 1,524) aged 9-18 and 65 males with conduct disorder aged 13-18. The result of confirmatory factor analysis showed a two-factor structure with four items deleted…

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among U.S. Army soldiers. Suicide-related ideation, which is associated with suicide attempts and suicide, can cause considerable distress. In a sample of 1,663 recently redeployed soldiers, we used factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the associations between combat exposure, unit…

The study aimed to develop the Homophobic Bullying Scale and to investigate its psychometric properties. The items of the Homophobic Bullying Scale were created to measure high school students' bullying behaviors motivated by homophobia, including verbal bullying, relational bullying, physical bullying, property bullying, sexual harassment, and…

The Creative Solution Diagnosis Scale (CSDS) is a 30-item scale based on a core of four criteria: Relevance & Effectiveness, Novelty, Elegance, and Genesis. The CSDS offers potential for the consensual assessment of functional product creativity. This article describes an empirical study in which non-expert judges rated a series of mousetrap…

There is a need to efficiently and effectively screen adjudicated youth residing within the juvenile justice system for suicide proneness. Accordingly, in the current study, the psychometric properties of the Life Attitude Schedule: Short Form (LAS:S), a 24-item risk assessment for suicide proneness, were assessed using data from adjudicated youth…