This article offers a critical review of the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology English Proficiency Test (MSRT), a high-stakes exam required for postgraduate graduation, scholarships, and certain employment positions in Iran. Despite its widespread use, the design and implementation of the MSRT raise concerns about its validity and…

This article describes and reviews The School Motivation and Learning Strategies Inventory (SMALSI™; Stroud & Reynolds, 2006), published by Western Psychological Services, a self-report inventory designed to assess academic motivation, as well as learning and study strategies. The test identifies 10 primary constructs, referred to broadly as…

Rasch analysis of the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-3 (SASSI-3; F. G. Miller & Lazowski, 1999) indicated that the SASSI-3 meets fundamental measurement properties; however, the authors of the current study recommend the elimination of nonfunctioning items and the improvement of response options for the face valid scales to…

The graduate experience is a critical time for development of academic faculty, but often there is little preparation for teaching during the graduate career. Teaching self-efficacy, an instructor's belief in his or her ability to teach students in a specific context, can help to predict teaching behavior and student achievement, and can be used…

Usability and accessibility have become increasingly important in computing curricula. This article briefly reviews how these concepts may be included in existing courses. The authors conducted a survey of student attitudes toward these issues at the start and end of a usability engineering course that included a group project with an…

The purpose of this review was to examine the practice of oral assessment in postgraduate medical education in the context of the core assessment constructs of validity, reliability and fairness. Although oral assessment has a long history in the certification process of medical specialists and is a well-established part of such proceedings for a…

Learners' feelings of social connectedness may be a key factor in predicting online course success. However, students attempting to perceive and process the social context in online courses often find themselves engaging in unfamiliar, technology-mediated communication channels. While there have been several empirically based strategies published…

The purpose of this study was to develop and provide an initial examination of a self-report measure of intervention usage called the Usage Rating Profile-Intervention (URP-I). From an initial pool of 55 items, results of exploratory factor analysis and reliability estimates supported a measure containing 35 items and four factors as relevant…

A sample of 79 individuals participated in the present study to evaluate the test score stability (8-week test-retest interval) and construct validity of the scores of the Adult Manifest Anxiety Scale-College Version, a new measure used to assess anxiety in college students, for application to graduate-level students. Results of the study…

This paper compares two methods of establishing content validity, forced-choice judgmental review and a latent category judgmental review. It also compares content validity evidence with the results of a scale reliability analysis and makes recommendations of the two content validity procedures. Two different groups of graduate students enrolled…

Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used to describe and categorize tasks from six graduate disciplines including academic psychology, applied psychology, English literature, journalism, physics, and electrical engineering. A sample of task descriptions was constructed through interviews with four or five graduate students from each…

This paper presents the investigation of the psychometric properties of the Graduate Program Self-Assessment (GPSA) questionnaires, developed by the Educational Testing Service, for the evaluation of nursing doctoral education. The data are from the 1984 cooperative program evaluation from 326 faculty, 659 doctoral students, and 296 alumni. The…

Cultural competence has become a central social work tenet enshrined in the profession's ethical and educational standards. Few measures of cultural competence exist, however, in spite of an increasing array of religious, ethnic, and racial groups in U.S. society. This article develops a new measure to assess cultural competence among one family…

The Self-Regulated Learning Inventory was developed to help researchers and teachers understand the concept of self-regulated learning and to provide a tool for identifying behaviors students need for academic success. Version One of the instrument contained 71 items representing the factors of metacognition, learning strategies, motivation,…

Clear verbal communication is a key skill for the modern scientist. In this article we describe two model science courses, one given to a small class and the other to a large class, in which verbal communication is emphasized as a key learning objective. Both courses use a form of problem-based learning (PBL) with an end point that involves…