Traces the formulation and norming of a questionnaire constructed for the self-reporting of English-as-a-Second-Language students on their preferred perceptual learning styles, focusing on the problem of reliability and validity in survey design. (CB)

A questionnaire developed to measure barriers to help-seeking behavior in adolescents was tested with 280 high school students following a pilot study. The instrument, Barriers to Adolescents Seeking Help, was found to have good test-retest reliability and adequate validity. Its use in identifying adolescents amenable to or resistant to therapy is…

Understanding help seeking intentions and behaviour is fundamental to the identification of factors that can be modified to increase engagement in counselling. Despite considerable research on these variables, integrating prior research has been impeded by a lack of consistent and psychometrically sound help-seeking measures. The General…

This paper uses the data from a survey among school teachers to conduct a series of factor analysis to test the reliability of a set of items to determine the factors deemed important in technology integration among teachers. The results suggest that there are specific dimensions of items that can be used to determine the factors perceived by…

Objective: To investigate the psychometric properties of the BMSLSS among 522 college students. Methods: Internal consistency reliability explored scale reliability, factor analysis explored construct validity, known-groups validity was assessed by use of items from the National College Youth Risk Behavior Survey and Harvard National Survey of…

Although there are thousands of studies investigating work and job design, existing measures are incomplete. In an effort to address this gap, the authors reviewed the work design literature, identified and integrated previously described work characteristics, and developed a measure to tap those work characteristics. The resultant Work Design…

Background: The construct of quality of life (QoL) has been the focus of a great deal of recent research and has been operationalized in the assessment of the effectiveness of biomedical and rehabilitative interventions. Consequently, the effective measurement of QoL has become a relevant issue. QoL assessment should take account of both objective…

The development of a project to assess the effectiveness of schools in a large urban school district is described in this paper, with a focus on improving the validity of school effectiveness instruments. Purposes of the project were to develop a methodology for reporting effective school strategies and to generate a broader profile of schools'…

A checklist of characteristics of effective mail questionnaires was developed that reflects some degree of consensus among experts in survey research and that can serve as a guide to novices designing a questionnaire. Journal and book sources of information about mail questionnaires were reviewed to yield 83 items in 7 categories that comprised…

A model and method for developing a valid and reliable paper-and-pencil test for evaluating the technical knowledge of baseball coaches in the National Coaching Certification Program (NCCP) in Canada are discussed. Development of a general theoretical and operational model for the evaluation of NCCP coaches in all sports are also studied. The…

The Phase 2 effort of a task to develop a new student critique form for the Air Training Command (ATC) is described. Phase 1 recommended the further development of group specific norms for officers, NCOs, and airmen enrolled in technical training schools. In Phase 2 additional items were added to the prototype form resulting in a later version of…

Four selected scales from the Learning Environment Inventory (LEI) were rewritten to measure the students' individual perceptions of their classroom environment, rather than their estimates of the opinions of the class as a whole. Both scales were then administered to 10 7th grade math classes and 4 10th grade social studies classes. The rewritten…

This study examined relationships among conformity to biographical item writing rules, rated stability, and obtained response stability. First and second administration data were collected and a stability index was obtained on 88 items using a college freshmen sample (N=106). One group of judges then educed rules to discriminate between the more…

The development and validation of an instrument to assess the needs and concerns of elementary school substitutes are described. A literature review identified nine categories of needs for substitute teachers. A factor analysis of item responses for a sample of elementary school substitutes corroborated the existence of nine underlying factors.…

An instrument to evaluate the effectiveness of constructivist teaching methods, the Constructivist Teaching Inventory (CTI), was developed and assessed, the assessment focusing on the validity and reliability of the instrument. A pool of items measuring the presence of identified elements of constructivist teaching was developed; items were…