This study investigated how and how often to present prompts to enhance students' source evaluation and multiple-text comprehension. Participants were 72 undergraduates who read a set of digital texts on a controversial topic of smartphone use and mental health, wrote a justification statement for their selection of trustworthy texts, and answered…

The measurement error in principal components extracted from a set of fallible measures is discussed and evaluated. It is shown that as long as one or more measures in a given set of observed variables contains error of measurement, so also does any principal component obtained from the set. The error variance in any principal component is shown…

There is an increasing demand for assessments that can provide more fine-grained information about examinees. In response to the demand, diagnostic measurement provides students with feedback on their strengths and weaknesses on specific skills by classifying them into mastery or nonmastery attribute categories. These attributes often form a…

Second-order latent growth curve models (S. C. Duncan & Duncan, 1996; McArdle, 1988) can be used to study group differences in change in latent constructs. We give exact formulas for the covariance matrix of the parameter estimates and an algebraic expression for the estimation of slope differences. Formulas for calculations of the required sample…

The extent to which one can reduce the rank of a symmetric matrix by only changing its diagonal entries is discussed. Extension of this work to minimum trace factor analysis is presented. (Author/JKS)

The problem of scaling ordinal categorical data observed over two or more sets of categories measuring a single characteristic is addressed. Scaling is obtained by solving a constrained entropy model. A Kullback-Leibler statistic is generated that operationalizes a measure for the strength of consistency among the sets of categories. (TJH)

Describes a study in which several different sets of hypertext links are inserted by different people in full-text documents. The degree of similarity between the sets is measured using coefficients and topological indices. As in comparable studies of inter-indexer consistency, the sets of links used by different people showed little similarity.…

A method for computation of dominance relations and for construction of their corresponding hierarchical structures is presented. The link between dominance and variance allows integration of the mathematical theory of information with least squares statistical procedures without recourse to logarithmic transformations of the data. (Author/CTM)

Discusses level 3 evaluation from Donald Kirkpatrick's Four Level Evaluation Model (level: 1-reaction; 2-learning; 3-behavior; 4-results) to measure training program performance. Highlights include an evaluation planning matrix; increasing evaluation data accuracy and reliability; data collection method selection; designing data collection…

Sufficient conditions are derived for the consistency and asymptotic normality of the least squares estimator of a trilinear decomposition model for multiway data analysis. The limiting covariance matrix is computed. (Author/SLD)

A five by five covariance matrix representing longitudinal measurements at five occasions is used to illustrate that markedly different types of learning curves may generate indistinguishable covariance structures. An excellent fit of a simplex structure can be misleading. Common uses of covariance structure models for growth studies are…

The stability of psychometric "g," the general factor of intelligence, is investigated in simulated correlation matrices and in typical empirical data from a large battery of mental tests. "G" is robust and almost invariant across methods of analysis. A reasonable strategy for estimating "g" is suggested. (SLD)