The purpose of this paper is to elaborate and comment on some themes related to construct validity, construct choice, and construct respecification in the Campbellian validity system. It is argued that Reichardt's [(2008, November). An alternative to the Campbellian conceptualization of validity. (Paper presentation). Evaluation 2008 Conference,…

The authors of the focus article describe an important issue related to the use and interpretation of causal indicators within the context of structural equation modeling (SEM). In the focus article, the authors illustrate with simulated data the effects of omitting a causal indicator. Since SEMs are used extensively in the social and behavioral…

Factor analysis has been frequently exploited in applied research to provide evidence about the underlying factors in various measurement instruments. A close inspection of a large number of studies published in leading applied linguistic journals shows that there is a misconception among applied linguists as to the relative merits of exploratory…

Elicited imitation (EI) has been widely used to examine second language (L2) proficiency and development and was an especially popular method in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, as the field embraced more communicative approaches to both instruction and assessment, the use of EI diminished, and the construct-related validity of EI scores as a…

This paper presents and discusses the statistical analysis of the responses from an online survey administered to a sample of US superintendents (n=225) in an attempt to explore and authenticate the construct validity of the ISLLC 2008 Standards through exploratory factor analysis. Using a Principal Axis Factor method, 6 factors were extracted…

In surveying the literature on assessment of cognitive abilities in adults and children, it is easy to assume that the proliferation of test batteries and terminology reflects a poverty of unifying models. However, the lack of recognition accorded good models of cognitive abilities may reflect inattention to theoretical development and injudicious…

The validity of the Italian version of the 28-items Resilience Scale for Adolescents (READ) was examined. A sample of 472 senior high school students between 18 and 20 years of age were used for this purpose. Reliability and validity were investigated by means of Cronbach's alpha, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. The…

This article introduces the development and validation of the spatial thinking ability test (STAT). The STAT consists of sixteen multiple-choice questions of eight types. The STAT was validated by administering it to a sample of 532 junior high, high school, and university students. Factor analysis using principal components extraction was applied…

Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999) provides researchers with public-domain, free-access personality measurement scales that are proxies of well-established published scales. One of the more commonly used IPIP sets employs 50 items to measure the 5 broad domains of the 5-factor model, with 10 items per factor. The…

This study explores the relationships between teacher empowerment, teacher receptivity toward, and perceived outcomes of, a system-wide curriculum change, particularly national curriculum reform in basic education in China. The results of a survey of 1,646 teachers from six provinces indicate that teachers were positive in their receptivity and…

The OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) constitute two of the largest ongoing international student and teacher surveys presently underway. Data generated from these surveys offer researchers and policy-makers opportunities to identify particular educational…

Models of personal epistemology have not been sufficiently integrated despite conceptual similarities. We attempted to model both dimensional and positional aspects of personal epistemology, as well as examine the domain specificity of these phenomena. The conceptual framework for this study was a new model of epistemic and ontological cognitive…

The scope of the present study was first to evaluate the cross-cultural reliability and validity of the Social Emotional Questionnaire (SEQ) and second to estimate and compare the prevalence rates of childhood developmental and psychiatric disorders in the general population of young children in the Netherlands and Greece. To this end, the…

As emphasized in the call for papers by Jonna Kulikowich and Gregory Hancock, the primary goal of this special issue of "Contemporary Educational Psychology" is to assemble a collection of illustrative empirical studies in educational psychology that utilize one or more state-of-the-art latent variable modeling procedures. Distinguishing these…

This study examined the degree of acceptance of qualitative research by medical trainees and physicians, and explored the causes for any differences in their support of qualitative versus quantitative research. Thirty-two individuals at four levels of medical training were studied. Eight philosophers of science served for construct validation.…