In this article, we formulate a nonlinear structural equation model (SEM) that can accommodate covariates in the measurement equation and nonlinear terms of covariates and exogenous latent variables in the structural equation. The covariates can come from continuous or discrete distributions. A Bayesian approach is developed to analyze the…

Cudeck and Browne (1983) proposed using cross-validation as a model selection technique in structural equation modeling. The purpose of this study is to examine the performance of eight cross-validation indices under conditions not yet examined in the relevant literature, such as nonnormality and cross-validation design. The performance of each…

Background: Longitudinal pediatric neuroimaging studies have demonstrated increasing volumes of white matter and regionally-specific inverted U shaped developmental trajectories of gray matter volumes during childhood and adolescence. Studies of monozygotic and dyzygotic twins during this developmental period allow exploration of genetic and…

Parental monitoring, assessed as (perceived) parental knowledge of the child's behavior, has been established as a consistent predictor of problem behavior. However, recent research indicates that parental knowledge has more to do with adolescents' self-disclosure than with parents' active monitoring. Although these findings may suggest that…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine how school social composition is related to perceived collective efficacy. Several hypotheses tested in this research were derived from social cognitive theory and based on the extant literature. Participants: Data were drawn from 1,981 teachers in 41 K-8 schools in a diverse urban school…

Direct and indirect effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and previous mathematics achievement on high school advanced mathematics course taking were explored. Structural equation modeling was carried out on data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study: 1988 database. The two variables were placed in a model together with the mediating…

The Youth Self Report (YSR) is a popular and widely used instrument assessing adolescent emotional and behavioral functioning. The goals of the present study were to address some of the limitations of the YSR, to examine its factor structure and equivalence across four racial/ethnic groups, and to determine if another combination of items could…

Empirical evidence of no age-related decline in life satisfaction (LS) in old age contrasts with frequently observed declines in the objective quality of elder people's lives and has therefore been labelled a "paradox" and interpreted in terms of stability of LS in the respective gerontological discussion. However, as this evidence was…

This study examined two models of extra-curricular support for enhancing the academic achievement of students as measured by state mandated test scores. One management model includes the use of school counselors as enhancers of the educational process while the other model addresses the contribution of school psychologists. To differentiate…

This article examines the relationships between perceptions of authenticity and alignment on study approach and learning outcome. Senior students of a vocational training program performed an authentic assessment and filled in a questionnaire about the authenticity of various assessment characteristics and the alignment between the assessment and…

To improve the management of hybrid courses, the relationship between learner characteristics and learning performance was analyzed in two regular university courses. Undergraduate and graduate students participated in two 15-week hybrid courses which consisted of face-to-face lectures (Information Industrial issues), and the corresponding modules…

This study investigated the effect of self-regulated learning, as indicated by academic self-concept, motivation and learning strategies, reading attitude and family based prerequisites on reading ability. Students (n=4018) in the eighth grade answered the IEA reading literacy test, the self-regulated learning questionnaire and a student…

Two theoretical models were constructed to illustrate how stressful events, family and friends support, depression, substance use, and death attitude mutually influence to create cumulative risks for suicide. The models were evaluated using structural equation modeling. Results showed that suicidality was strongly predicted by death attitude,…

A set of methods is proposed for the analysis of opportunity to learn (OTL) in relation to achievement in large-scale educational assessments. The focus is on how to assess the effect of OTL on performance while taking prior performance and other background factors into account. The methods are illustrated with mathematics data from the National…

Several goodness of fit (GOF) criteria have been developed to assist the researcher in interpreting structural equation models. However, the determination of GOF for structural equation models is not as straightforward as that for other statistical approaches in multivariate procedures. The four GOF criteria used across the commonly used…