Teachers' competence to estimate the effectiveness of learning materials is important and often neglected in programmes for teacher education. In this lecture I will try to explore the possibilities of designing scaffolding instruments for a "priori" assessment of language learning tasks, based on insights from SLA and cognitive psychology, more…

Background: Large-scale psychosocial interventions in complex emergencies call for a screening procedure to identify individuals at risk. To date there are no screening instruments that are developed within low- and middle-income countries and validated for that purpose. The present study assesses the cross-cultural validity of the brief,…

This report presents the results of a large-scale national validity study of the SAT®. In March 2005, the College Board introduced a revised SAT, with an additional section in writing and minor changes in content to the verbal and mathematics sections. The first full cohort of students taking this test completed their first year of college in…

Analysis of the cost-effectiveness of 29 Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models suggests that all 29 models are less cost-effective than an alternative approach for raising student achievement, involving rapid assessment systems that test students 2 to 5 times per week in math and reading and provide rapid feedback of the results to students and…

Background: The School Physical Activity and Nutrition (SPAN) questionnaire was developed as a surveillance instrument to measure physical activity, nutrition attitudes, and dietary and physical activity behaviors in children and adolescents. The SPAN questionnaire has 2 versions. Objective: This study was conducted to evaluate the validity of…

Higher education institutions are becoming increasingly engaged in assessing their programs in order to enhance student learning outcomes. States, accreditation bodies and various organizations are calling upon institutions to buildup their accountability towards student learning. Accordingly, multiple assessment methods (both direct and indirect)…

In this study, we investigated a new instrument: the Southampton Test of Empathy for Preschoolers (STEP). The test incorporated 8 video vignettes of children in emotional scenarios, assessing a child's ability to understand (STEP-UND) and share (STEP-SHA) in the emotional experience of a story protagonist. Each vignette included 4 emotions (angry,…

The Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, "Social Indicators Research," 46, 137-155, 1999) is a brief measure for assessing subjective happiness. The reliability and validity of the Malay version of the Subjective Happiness Scale was investigated in a community sample of 290 Chinese and 227 Malays in Malaysia. Results…

With the proliferation of the Internet and World Wide Web applications, people are increasingly interacting with government to citizen (G2C) eGovernment systems. It is therefore important to measure the success of G2C eGovernment systems from the citizen's perspective. While general information systems (IS) success models have received much…

The present study investigated the factor structure of parent and teacher Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ) in a population of 7-9 years old children. For validation purposes, factors derived were correlated with results on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). A three-factor solution was identified on both parent and…

Two studies are reported presenting the development of the Adolescent Friendship Attachment Scale (AFAS), a 30 item self-report measure of adolescent close friendship conceptualized as an attachment relationship. Study One reports the results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with a sample of 490 adolescents aged 13 to 19 years. A…

Research Findings: The present study was designed to examine the factorial validity of the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale-Short Form (STRS-SF; R. C. Pianta, 2001) and its invariance across gender in the Greek educational context. The STRS-SF comprises 15 items that measure 2 dimensions of teacher-child relationships: Closeness and Conflict.…

Background: In Australia, diagnosis and management of depression in adults with intellectual disability (ID) often occurs within the primary care setting. Few tools are available to assist general practitioners (GPs) in the diagnostic process. The study aim was to assess properties of carer and GP checklists developed to address this problem.…

This article attempts to present a novel application of a method of measuring accuracy for academic success predictors that could be used as a standard. This procedure is known as the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, which comes from statistical decision techniques. The statistical prediction techniques provide predictor models and…

This paper opens by describing research since 1975 (McCrae and Costa) on a set of related traits that identified as aspects of Openness to Experience. The historic roots of the concept of Openness to Experience are traced. Data are provided on the convergent and discriminant validity of the six Revised NEO-Personality Inventory facets of Fantasy,…