Researchers, theorists, and practitioners have expressed a renewed interest in the longitudinal dynamics of personality characteristics in adulthood, including organic life span trajectories and their amenability to volitional change. However, this research has apparently not yet expanded to include the Dark Triad (psychopathy, narcissism,…

American Educational Research Association (AERA) standards stipulate that researchers show evidence of the internal structure of instruments. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is one structural equation modeling procedure designed to assess construct validity of assessments that has broad applicability for counselors interested in instrument…

In Gargani and Strong (2014), we describe The Rapid Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness (RATE), a new teacher evaluation instrument. Our account of the validation research associated with RATE inspired a review by Good and Lavigne (2015). Here, we reply to the main points of their review. We elaborate on the validity, reliability, theoretical…

The notion of validity in the social sciences is evolving and is influenced by philosophy of science, critiques of objectivity, and epistemological debates. Methodology for validation of the knowledge claims is diverse across different philosophies of science. In other words, definition and the way to establish of validity have evolved as…

This article presents the idea that distance delivery in social work education is seen as an interaction between four constructs: the student, the setting in which the education is delivered, the educational content, and the expected educational outcomes. To fully understand these interactions, clear operational indicators, well established in…

In this chapter, the author examines the adequacy and appropriateness of self-report data using the lens of construct validity (Kane, 2006; Messick, 1989). Because construct validity focuses on the appropriateness of data for specific uses or interpretations, he limits his discussion to the use of self-report data in scholarly research. Other…

This guide is designed to help researchers make sure that their research reports include enough information about study measures so that readers can assess the quality of the study's methods and results. The guide also provides examples of write-ups about measures and suggests resources for learning more about these topics. The guide assumes…

Research supports the connection between engagement, achievement, and school behavior across levels of economic and social advantage and disadvantage. Despite increasing interest and scientific findings, a number of interrelated conceptual and methodological issues must be addressed to advance this construct, particularly for designing…

Examines testing practices in: (1) the past, in which the traditional paradigm left little room for cognitive psychology principles; (2) the present, in which testing research is enhanced by principles of cognitive psychology; and (3) the future, in which the potential of cognitive psychology should be fully realized through item design.…

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussion concerning the value and validity of fiction, and arts-based approaches more broadly, as research. I offer this contribution through a narrative: "Conference Story." The narrative involves its characters, in an Oxford pub, debating the merits and otherwise of Peter Clough's (2002)…

One of the most salient requirements for international educational research is the use of comparable measures. For the comparison of student performance across countries the use of item response theory (IRT) scaling techniques facilitates the collection of cross-nationally comparable measures. But there is also a need for valid and comparable…

In this article, Walt Haney, Michael Russell, and Damian Bebell summarize a decade of work using student drawings as a way to both document and change education and schooling. After a brief summary of more than one hundred years of literature on children's drawings, the authors point out that drawings have been little recognized as a medium of…

With increasing reliance being placed on the results of their surveys, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recognized a need for these survey results to be valid and reliable. As part of the work of the Statistical Analysis Group in Education (SAGE), an effort was undertaken to investigate validity and reliability in survey…

Methods that have been employed in McGill University's (Montreal, Quebec) program of research into the nature of learning are described. The methods illustrate four phases of inquiry: conceptualization or model-building; data gathering techniques; data representation; and data analysis. For the university's learning task project, the development…

I discuss the contributions of Harvey Siegel, Francis Schrag and Randall Curren to this volume. Their articles cast in bold relief the relation of High Stakes Testing to the goals of education, the nature of mind and the demands of justice. I argue that the connections are deep, but that the considerations these authors raise do not show that High…