Reflection is a critical factor in solving design problems. Using good methods to observe designers' reflection is essential to inform the design of the learning environments that support the development of design problem-solving skills. In this study, we have developed and validated a novel self-reporting questionnaire as an efficient instrument…

There is limited information about specific research constructs developed by adults with intellectual disability in undertaking research despite increasing involvement in research "with" rather than "on" these individuals. Participatory research was used with three young adults with intellectual disability to collaboratively…

We present validity evidence for the Expectancy-Value-Cost (EVC) Scale of student motivation. Using a brief, 10-item scale, we measured middle school students' expectancy, value, and cost for their math and science classes in the Fall and Winter of the same academic year. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the three-factor structure of the EVC…

The importance of afterschool hours for youth development is widely acknowledged, and afterschool settings have recently received increasing attention as an important venue for youth interventions, bringing a growing need for reliable and valid measures of afterschool quality. This study examined the extent to which the two observational tools,…

The psychometric properties of the General Functioning subscale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device were examined using the Rasch Model (N = 237 couples). Mothers' and fathers' ratings of the General Functioning subscale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device are recommended, provided these are analyzed separately. More than a quarter of…

Learning critical thinking skills are the goal of educational systems so the term "critical thinking" (CT) is frequently found in educational policy documents. Despite this frequency, however, precise understandings among teachers of what CT really means do not exit. The present study is designed to answer the following question. We can…

The present paper gives a general introduction to the linear logistic test model (Fischer, 1973), an extension of the Rasch model with linear constraints on item parameters, along with eRm (an R package to estimate different types of Rasch models; Mair, Hatzinger, & Mair, 2014) functions to estimate the model and interpret its parameters. The…

Understanding human motivation requires gauging individuals' strivings to be effective in controlling goal pursuits and establishing the truth about themselves and their experiences. Two constructs, assessment and locomotion, capture well truth and control strivings, respectively. The validation process of the instruments measuring assessment and…

This article presents the results from a study of 535 early undergraduate students at six universities that was designed to describe their views of the meaning of proof and how these views relate to their attitudes and beliefs towards proof and their classroom experiences with learning proof. Results show that early undergraduate students have…

Background: The Autism Detection in Early Childhood (ADEC) is a clinician-administered, Level 2 screening tool. A retrospective file audit was used to investigate its clinical effectiveness. Method: Toddlers referred to an Australian child development service between 2008 and 2010 (N = 53, M age = 32.2 months) were screened with the ADEC. Their…

This report presents the statistical theory underlying the "RCT-YES" software that estimates and reports impacts for RCTs for a wide range of designs used in social policy research. The report discusses a unified, non-parametric design-based approach for impact estimation using the building blocks of the Neyman-Rubin-Holland causal…

The study reported in this paper is part of a larger study on the roles of examples in learning to prove. We focus here on manifestations of students' productive use of examples for proving in the course of exploring conjectures and proving or disproving them. In this context, we define productive use of examples for proving as students'…

This paper reports the results from a sensor-free detector of mind wandering during an online reading task. Features consisted of reading behaviors (e.g., reading time) and textual features (e.g., level of difficulty) extracted from self-paced reading log files. Supervised machine learning was applied to two datasets in order to predict if…

Policy changes from the past decade have resulted in a growing interest in identifying effective teachers and their characteristics. This study is the third study to use data from a randomized experiment to test the validity of measures of teacher effectiveness. The authors collected effectiveness measures across three school years from three…

This article provides family scientists with an understanding of contemporary measurement perspectives and the ways in which item response theory (IRT) can be used to develop measures with desired evidence of precision and validity for research uses. The article offers a nontechnical introduction to some key features of IRT, including its…