Aim: Assisting women with a history of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) to adopt healthy lifestyles is a priority for diabetes prevention. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate measures that can be used to assess the efficacy of behavior change interventions in this group. Method: Measures of psychosocial influences on physical…

Using data collected from a recent national survey of Australian first-year students, this paper defines and validates four scales--belonging, feeling supported, intellectual engagement and workload stress--to measure the student experience of university. These scales provide insights into the university experience for both groups and individual…

The current push for principals' to be accountable for student outcomes has led to a renewed interest in the role of leadership in instructional improvement. This article describes the development and validation of a survey that focused on organisational management features that are likely to bring about improvement in instruction. The development…

We used two studies to evaluate, modify, and provide initial validation for a revised Academic Hardiness scale. First, 16 experts rated scale items for content validity and identified two problematic questions. Second, confirmatory factor analyses with 300 Grade 10 students (46% boys, age range 14-17) identified a 17-item version to be the best…

Aim: The aim of the study was to investigate the construct validity of the Quality of Upper Extremity Skills Test (QUEST) in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Method: A total of 170 QUEST assessments from a convenience sample of 94 children with CP involved in clinical and research treatment programmes (54 males, 40 females; mean age 6y 10mo, SD…

This paper details a systematic literature review identifying problems in extant research relating to teachers' attitudes toward reporting child sexual abuse and offers a model for new attitude scale development and testing. Scale development comprised a five-phase process grounded in contemporary attitude theories, including (a) developing the…

Existing research posits multiple dimensions of bullying and victimization but has not identified well-differentiated facets of these constructs that meet standards of good measurement: goodness of fit, measurement invariance, lack of differential item functioning, and well-differentiated factors that are not so highly correlated as to detract…

The "Multidimensional Attitudes toward Inclusive Education Scale" (MATIES) was developed to effectively measure affective, cognitive and behavioural aspects of attitudes, within the realm of inclusive education that includes physical, social and curricular inclusion. Models within Item Response Theory and Classical Test Theory were used…

This article aims to contribute to the ongoing evaluation of the Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) by investigating its construct and concurrent validity with a subsample of 642 children aged 4 to 5 years drawn from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Construct validity was examined by considering the theoretical…

H. W. Marsh's monograph (1987) on students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness in higher education is summarized. The research, which emphasized the construct validity approach, led to the development of the Students' Evaluations of Educational Quality (SEEQ) instrument. Factor analysis resulted in identification of nine SEEQ factors--learning…

The construct validities of the Self Description Questionnaire I, the Perceived Social Competence Scale, and the Multidimensional Measure of Children's Perceptions of Control were assessed, using 508 seventh through ninth graders in Sydney (Australia). Factor analysis, multitrait-multimethod analyses, and patterns of correlations with additional…