Background: Research on prediction of violent and sexual offending behaviour has developed considerably in the mainstream criminological literature. Apart from one publication [Quinsey (2004) "Offenders with Developmental Disabilities," pp. 131-142] this has not been extended to the field of intellectual disabilities. Methods: Work on actuarial…

Background: There are no validated risk assessment tools for intellectually disabled (ID) sex offenders, with the exception of the work of Lindsay et al. ["Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities" (2004) 17: 267] regarding the prediction of risk for aggressive behaviour of ID offenders in residential settings. ID sex offenders…

In an effort to individualize instruction and improve the effectiveness of instructor-learner transactions, education and instructional research has addressed a wide assortment of learner variables and assessed their relationships to instructional methods and environments. Adult education has recently seen the development by Conti and Kolody of a…

Twenty-seven full-time students within the Physician Assistant Studies Program at The University of Texas--Pan American were anonymously surveyed to determine their levels of stress while enrolled in their first semester. The majority of respondents reported that their stress levels at this point in the program tell within the moderate to…

Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALGains) is a Web-based instrument for measuring student perception of their learning in a variety of courses. The authors adapted this instrument to measure students' achieved proficiency in analyzing cases in an advanced business communication class. The instrument showed that students did achieve a high…

This study examined the use of rubrics in scoring a performance-based assessment. After receiving a health lesson of ways to have a healthy brain, fifth grade students were given an assignment to illustrate and write a booklet that demonstrated their knowledge of the topic. From students' responses the researchers constructed four sample papers…

This article discusses methods for evaluating students' content-area literacy skills. Four specific factors that affect content-area literacy are described: vocabulary knowledge, topic knowledge, text structure knowledge, and textbook readability, along with methods of evaluating each of the factors. Most of these methods have not yet been…

The concept of a behavior domain is a reasonable and essential foundation for psychometric work based on true score theory, the linear model of common factor analysis, and the nonlinear models of item response theory. Investigators applying these models to test data generally treat the true scores or factors or traits as abstractive psychological…

The correspondence between the Hare Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV; S. D. Hart, D. N. Cox, & R. D. Hare, 1995) and the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991, 2003) was examined in forensic (N = 175) and correctional (N = 188) samples. Intermeasure correlations for Total scores (0.95 forensic, 0.94…

Institutions of higher education want to diversify their learning climates, and many offer courses in multiculturalism, yet these courses still do not meet the needs of attitudinal change. A new instrument was developed, the Munroe Multicultural Attitude Scale Questionnaire (MASQUE), that was theoretically based in Banks's transformative approach,…

We aimed to design alternative estimates of pre-morbid/prior intelligence to the National Adult Reading Test (NART) and the Spot-the-Word (STW) in order to tap non-vocabulary based knowledge stores. The rationale for the development of the new tests was that more cognitively able individuals acquire and retain more "singular facts" from their…

Item response theory (IRT) and categorical data factor analysis (CDFA) are complementary methods for the analysis of the psychometric properties of psychiatric measures that purport to measure latent constructs. These methods have been applied to relatively few child and adolescent measures. We provide the first combined IRT and CDFA analysis of a…

In Dodge's model of "social information processing" depression is the result of a linear sequence of five stages of information processing ("Annu Rev Psychol" 44: 559-584, 1993). These stages follow a person's reaction to situational stimuli, such that each stage of information processing mediates the relationship between earlier and later stages.…

This study focused on the relationship between voice and judgments of procedural justice in a sample of older adolescents and examined potential moderating and mediating influences of identity orientation (personal, social, and collective) and negative emotional response. Participants read 1 of 2 different family conflict scenarios (voice and no…

The study of quality of life remains a key area of interest for not only researchers but to society. Through research being completed in multiple disciplines and from a multitude of perspectives, the need to understand the full breadth of quality of life is required in order for the further development of this research area. Through building on…