Gay affirmative practice models provide guidelines for behaviors and beliefs in social work practice with gay and lesbian individuals. The aim of this study was to develop a valid rapid assessment instrument to assess the extent to which social work practitioners engage in principles consistent with gay affirmative practice. The Gay Affirmative…

Student learning is a complex incremental cognitive process; assessment needs to parallel this, reporting the results in similar terms. Application of fuzzy sets and logic to the criterion-referenced assessment of student learning is considered here. The constrained qualitative assessment (CQA) system was designed, and then applied in assessing a…

A new measure of women's relationships, the Relational Health Indices (RHI), comprises three scales that assess growth-fostering connections with peers, mentors, and communities. The RHI was developed using the Relational Model (Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, Surrey, 1991; Miller & Stiver, 1997), a theory of women's psychological development.…

Assessment of the overarching self-regulatory mechanisms, or executive functions, in any age group is challenging, in part due to the complexity of this domain, in part due to their dynamic essence, and in part due to the inextricable links between these central processes and the associated domain-specific processes, such as language, motor…

Annually in the People's Republic of China (China) several million secondary school graduates who wish to gain entrance to Chinese universities and colleges take the National Matriculation English Test (NMET)--the university entrance test of English for the entire country. This article first describes the test, and then focuses on examining its…

Objective: The research was conducted to determine the relationship between violent trauma, child abuse history, and dissociative symptoms in a Russian population. Method: Three hundred and one undergraduate students from Moscow State Linguistics University participated in the study and completed the Dissociation Continuum Scale, the Violence…

This article describes the development and initial validation of obtained scores from the Academic Expectations Stress Inventory (AESI), which measures expectations as a source of academic stress in middle and high school Asian students. In the first study, exploratory factor analysis results from 721 adolescents suggested a nine-item scale with…

Despite anecdotal evidence suggesting that air travel is personally demanding, little research has examined air travel stress. To address these issues, the author developed and evaluated the 1st known measure of air travel stress-the Air Travel Stress Scale-in 3 studies. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis indicated 3 components: (a)…

Specialists in the field of large-scale, high-stakes writing assessment have, over the last forty years alternately discussed the issue of maximizing either reliability or validity in test design. Factors complicating the debate--such as Messick's (1989) expanded definition of validity, and the ethical implications of testing--are explored. An…

Empathy has been suggested to facilitate effective collaborative problem solving in children. The current study adapted the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI, Davis, 1980), a well-validated empathy measure for adults, for use with children aged 8 and 9 years. Four hundred and thirteen school children aged between 7;11 and 9;11 years completed…

States are establishing high stakes assessments to serve as a measurement tool of students' academic abilities. This study essentially explored and sought to understand some of Maryland's mathematics and science practitioners' perspectives on increase testing, and the No Child left Behind (NCLB) Act. Basically, the study sought to understand and…

Psychological methods of assessing intelligence have been criticised because of their limited diagnostic-remedial nature and especially their lack of potential for initiating effective and pragmatic intervention programmes. Similarly, the means through which the results of such methods are communicated in order to make them useful and constructive…

The purpose of the study was to determine comparability of an online version to the original paper-pencil version of Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). This study employed methods from both Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT). Findings from CTT analyses supported the reliability and discriminant validity of both versions.…

A principal components analysis of the Teacher Rating Scale-Child (TRS-C) of the Behavior Assessment System for Children was conducted with a cross-sectional cohort of 659 children in Grades 1 to 5. A predictive validity study was then conducted with a 2-year longitudinal sample of 206 children. The results suggested that scores from the resulting…

The study developed a Big 6 Information Problem-Solving Scale (B61PS), including the subscales of task definition and information-seeking strategies, information access and synthesis, and evaluation. More than 1,500 fifth and sixth graders in Taiwan responded. The study revealed that the scale showed adequate reliability in assessing the…