A theory-driven approach to evaluation (TDE) emphasizes the development and empirical testing of conceptual models to understand the processes and mechanisms through which programs achieve their intended goals. However, most reported applications of TDE are limited to large-scale experimental/quasi-experimental program evaluation designs. Very few…

Background: Evaluation is a tool that can promote accountability and enhance organizational improvement. For these reasons funding entities from government to foundations are increasingly relying on program evaluation as a key instrument to determine effectiveness and hold recipient organizations accountable. What has ensued is an environment of…

Online learners and instructors are more diverse in their social and cultural backgrounds than their counterparts in face-to-face classrooms. The diversified social and cultural backgrounds of online learners and instructors complicate the conceptualization of online social presence and pose challenges to instructors in course design. This study…

Positive and negative mood have often been considered indicators of wellbeing, affecting behavior and adjustment. This study evaluated the personal and familial predictors of positive and negative mood among 1,024 Israeli students (children with learning disabilities [LD]: 302 boys, 198 girls; children without LD: 308 boys, 216 girls). They were…

A graphical method is presented for assessing the state of identifiability of the parameters in a linear structural equation model based on the associated directed graph. We do not restrict attention to recursive models. In the recent literature, methods based on graphical models have been presented as a useful tool for assessing the state of…

The two most common observed-score equating functions are the linear and equipercentile functions. These are often seen as different methods, but von Davier, Holland, and Thayer showed that any equipercentile equating function can be decomposed into linear and nonlinear parts. They emphasized the dominant role of the linear part of the nonlinear…

When a covariance structure model is misspecified, parameter estimates will be affected. It is important to know which estimates are systematically affected and which are not. The approach of analyzing the path is both intuitive and informative for such a purpose. Different from path analysis, analyzing the path uses path tracing and elementary…

This study examined contributions of maternal personality and infant temperament to infant vocabulary and cognitive development both directly and indirectly through parental stress. Participants were recruited at birth and included 63 infant twin pairs and their mothers. Assessments were completed at 6, 9, 12, and 18 months of age and included…

In this study of 116 high-poverty schools, we explored teaching and coaching in grades K-3. We developed and validated observation protocols for both coaching and teaching. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were computed to identify and confirm factors that explained the protocol data. Three coaching factors were identified in both…

The authors evaluated the adequacy of an extensive adaptation of the American Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, second edition (KABC-II), for 6- to 10-year-old Kannada-speaking children of low socioeconomic status in Bangalore, South India. The adapted KABC-II was administered to 598 children. Subtests showed high reliabilities, the…

Objective: Health locus of control (HLC) is associated with health behaviours. We aimed to investigate the difference of HLC to understand the potential gap in health beliefs between physicians and the general public. Design and setting: Physicians and the general public were surveyed in Japan using a cross-sectional survey. Data on the Japanese…

Guided by an ecological perspective, two competing models were tested to examine how sibling relationship quality directly predicted or interacted with academic support from siblings to predict Latino adolescents' academic motivation (N = 258). Gender differences were examined utilizing multiple group analysis in structural equation modeling.…

Social trust (i.e., belief that people are generally fair and trustworthy) is important to the functioning of democracies, and trend studies show it has declined. We test hypotheses concerning the development of these beliefs in adolescence. Based on surveys of 1,535 adolescents collected over 2 years, we find that middle and late adolescents had…

Purpose: The central aim of this study is to incorporate two core personality factors (neuroticism and extroversion) in the job demands-resources (JD-R) model. Design/methodology/approach: It was hypothesized that neuroticism would be most strongly related to the health impairment process, and that extroversion would be most strongly related to…

This study was designed to assess business creativity of students in Taiwan. A questionnaire was developed and administered to students in business-related departments of 16 vocational schools during November 2006. Of the 1,420 administered questionnaires, 1,052 were valid, resulting in a valid response rate of 70.48%. Exploratory factor analysis…