Traditional social sector and international development organizations have prioritized measuring the impacts of their work for decades. Understanding the ways in which they are bringing about change or helping people and communities has long been part of the traditional social sector ethos. The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) was founded by…

The aim of this dissertation was to develop and validate a novel Epistemic Competence Beliefs Measure (ECBM) in order to explore students' ability to evaluate the characteristics of scenarios about complex and controversial social issues. Epistemic competence was hypothesized to be critical in performing multiple source use (MSU) tasks and in the…

Design problems are highly ill-structured, having "ambiguous specifications of goals, no determined solution path, and the need to integrate multiple knowledge domains" (Jonassen, 2000, p. 80). Design problems are generated by stakeholders to meet needs that exist outside of the classroom (Simon, 1973; Jonassen, 2000)--this is in…

As the number of jobs in the science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) workforce grows exponentially, there has never been a more important time to provide students with real-world learning opportunities that have 21st century implications. Measuring things that matter is a fundamental skill that formulates the backbone of many concepts…

For decades, social mobility has been the focus of governments across the political spectrum. But despite wide-ranging support for action, social mobility in Britain remains low, with poor performance across several social mobility measures, nationally and internationally. And although politicians have long referenced the ideas and issues…

Background: Emotional and behavioural problems as well as a lack of social competence are common in adolescents with borderline intellectual functioning and impair their social and vocational integration. Group interventions specifically developed for this target group are scarce and controlled evaluation studies are absent. Methods: A…

Many schools have problem-solving teams that support teachers by helping identify and resolve students' academic and social problems. Although research is limited, it has been found that teams sometimes fail to implement problem-solving processes with fidelity, which may hinder the resolution of problems. We developed the Team-Initiated Problem…

School violence became a topic of broad national concern in the United States in reaction to a series of tragic school shootings during the 1990s. Efforts to understand and prevent school shootings have stimulated the rapid development of a broader interest in school safety with an emerging multidisciplinary research agenda. The maturation and…

If a loss function is available specifying the social cost of an error of measurement in the score on a unidimensional test, an asymptotic method, based on item response theory, is developed for optimal test design for a specified target population of examinees. Since in the real world such loss functions are not available, it is more useful to…

Deliberations about social policy often center on estimates of harm or benefit generated by different interest groups. Problems in what is measured and how it is measured are illustrated by a discussion of research into sexual abuse and rape. Advocacy research is an unreliable foundation for social policy formation. (SLD)

This paper suggests that human values play a central role in communication and in the conceptualization of social judgment theory's fundamental terms: attitude and ego-involvement. It contends that values are the basis of an individual's attitude or category system and that one's level of ego-involvement in an issue is a function of (1) the…

Known but neglected validity issues in measurement are reviewed from the perspective of a 50-year history of research. Important but too often overlooked validity issues in applying assessment to social issue are identified, and needed directions for the fields of assessment and measurement are suggested. (SLD)

Using a sample from a homogeneous population, a study was conducted to examine the distinction between intrapersonal and interpersonal issue agendas, and the use of open-ended questions, paried comparisons, and semantic differentials to measure respondent agendas. The study found measurable differences between intrapersonal and interpersonal issue…

Evaluates sociological studies which show that socioeconomic status and mental illness are inversely related and hypothesizes that this relationship exists for some disorders but not others. Findings from a study of approximately 10,000 first admissions to state hospitals indicate that an inverse relationship exists only for organic and…

This book, a critique of "The Bell Curve" by R. Herrnstein and C. Murray, explores what "inequality" in society means, how it arises, and how it can be measured or dealt with quantitatively. It also considers how societal and other variables work to increase or decrease inequality. The book argues that "The Bell…