The PsychoSomatic Problems (PSP)-scale is built upon eight items intended to tap information about psychosomatic problems among schoolchildren and adolescents in general populations. The purpose of the study is to analyse the psychometric properties of the PSP-scale by means of the Rasch model, with a focus on the operating characteristics of the…

Raju and Oshima (2005) proposed two prophecy formulas based on item response theory in order to predict the reliability of ability estimates for a test after change in its length. The first prophecy formula is equivalent to the classical Spearman-Brown prophecy formula. The second prophecy formula is misleading because of an underlying false…

Peer review is a gatekeeper, the final arbiter of what is valued in academia, but it has been criticized in relation to traditional psychological research criteria of reliability, validity, generalizability, and potential biases. Despite a considerable literature, there is surprisingly little sound peer-review research examining these criteria or…

Research on selective mutism (SM) has been limited by the absence of standardized, psychometrically sound assessment measures. The purpose of our investigation was to present two studies that examined the factor structure and initial reliability and validity of the Selective Mutism Questionnaire (SMQ), a 17-item parent report measure of failure to…

The tendency to ruminate has been consistently linked to psychological disturbances, such as increased stress, anger, and fear in response to provocations. However, existing measures of rumination focus on the disposition to ruminate rather than on rumination about a specific situation. This limits the ability to explore rumination about a…

This article reports on development and validation of an instrument for use in human capital approaches for organizational planning. The article describes use of a team of subject matter experts in developing a measure of human capital planning, and use of exploratory factor analysis techniques to validate the resulting instrument. These data were…

This study examines interdisciplinary differences in final-year psychology, pharmacy and theology students' academic thinking and personal epistemology. The semi-structured interviews (n = 52) were analysed using content analysis to assess students' individual perspectives of the cognitive process of thinking, knowing and reasoning. The three…

A reliable and valid instrument to assess neuromotor condition in infancy is a prerequisite for early detection of developmental motor disorders. We developed a video-based assessment of motor behaviour, the Infant Motor Profile (IMP), to evaluate motor abilities, movement variability, ability to select motor strategies, movement symmetry, and…

The authors discuss the results of a study in which they investigated 68 university-level media education students' knowledge of Web 2.0 and their conceptions about its impact on media literacy. The main research finding was that the students argued firmly in favor of new media literacy. Their own use of Web 2.0 applications was, however, rather…

Introduction: The suitability of 52 items for measuring Teacher Efficacy was investigated with the aim of developing and validating a Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES) for Nigerian secondary school teachers. Method: The TES was administered on 2400 teachers (mean age = 36.75 years). Data were subjected to factor and reliability analyses. Results:…

A teacher professional identity scale was developed for Hong Kong in-service teachers to measure the professional identity of teachers. Most studies of professional identity have been qualitative. The present study tried to examine this important concept using a quantitative method. Based on various studies, one of the ways of understanding the…

Today's health sciences educational programmes have to deal with a growing and changing amount of knowledge. It is becoming increasingly important for students to be able to use and manage knowledge. We suggest incorporating open-book tests in assessment programmes to meet these changes. This view on the use of open-book tests is discussed and the…

College students from the working class have interesting stories to tell about the meaning and operation of mobility through education. The author, herself a "working-class academic," explores some of the issues and dilemmas of uncovering and presenting these stories. Specifically, the author addresses: (1) the effects of interviewing those…

Many social science theories that examine the connection between beliefs and behaviors assume that belief constructs will predict behaviors similarly across development. Converging research implies that this assumption may not be tenable across all ages or all belief constructs. Thus, to test this implication, the relation between behavior and…

Curriculum-based measurement of mathematics (CBM-M) comprises a set of procedures and instrumentation to assess the level and trend of student achievement in early mathematics. The purpose of this article is to review the recent research and psychometric evidence for CBM-M. Although recent developments in CBM-M include procedures to assess early…