Controversy exists regarding the "DSM-5" criteria for ASD. This study tested the psychometric properties of the "DSM-5" model and determined how well it performed across different gender, IQ, and "DSM-IV-TR" sub-type, using clinically collected data on 227 subjects (median age = 3.95 years, majority had IQ > 70).…

Disability scholars have recently highlighted social work professional organizations' lagging pace in adopting disability advocacy within diversity agendas and have questioned the adequacy of disability content within accredited social work curricula. Amid growing concerns, measures to assess attitudes of social workers toward disability and…

The flagrant failure of education institutions across the P-20 pipeline to adequately respond to the intellectual, emotional, and social needs of Black males is well-documented in the education research literature. Alternatively, empathy is theorized to improve the education practitioner's professional interactions with students of color. This…

As part of the Race to the Top initiative, the United States Department of Education made nearly 1 billion dollars available in State Educational Technology grants with the goal of ramping up school technology. One result of this effort is that states, districts, and schools across the country are using computerized assessments to measure their…

The authors outline the application of latent class analysis (LCA) to classroom observational instruments. LCA offers diagnostic information about teachers' instructional strengths and weaknesses, along with estimates of measurement error for individual teachers, while remaining relatively straightforward to implement and interpret. It is…

In this interview, JD Brown reflects on language testing/assessment. He suggests that language testing can be seen as a continuum with hard core positivist approaches at one end and post modernist interpretive perspectives at the other, and also argues that norm referencing (be it proficiency, placement, or aptitude testing) and criterion…

The widespread concern about mathematics achievement has drawn extensive research attention to what skills predict later academic achievement. There is clear and consistent evidence that math achievement at school entry is the strongest predictor of later school success and educational attainment. Early childhood math achievement can thus have…

The "Student-Teacher Relationship Scale" ("STRS"), a teacher-reported measure of the quality of the relationship between teachers and their students, has been used in numerous studies of students with and without disabilities from preschool to early adolescence. However, evidence for the reliability, validity, and scale…

The question of who is ready to serve as a help-giver reflects an unresolved question in the research on parents of children with disabilities. There is little consensus as to whether or not there are regular, predictable phases of adaptation to a child's disability. The purpose of this research was to develop a measure of readiness to be trained…

Thirty-nine American and 78 Turkish preservice elementary teachers' personal science teaching efficacy (PSTE) beliefs were investigated during science methods courses with standard and retrospective pre-post testing methods. Significant differences in the PSTE gain scores, which indicate the changes in the mean PSTE scores from…

The authors report a validation study of the Teen Court Peer Influence Scale (TCPIS), a newly developed scale, to examine its factor structure, reliability, and evidence of validity. Methods: The scale was disseminated to 202 participants in six teen courts in the state of Florida, and the authors conducted exploratory factor analyses. Content…

Most students with Asperger's syndrome are taught in general education classes by teachers who do not have special education training and it is the usually the administrator's responsibility to determine which general education teacher will teach a child with Asperger's syndrome. It is likely that most such decisions rely heavily on the…

The purpose of the present study was to identify whether conductors distinguish functions of conducting similarly to functions implied in previous research. A sample of 84 conductors with a full range of experience levels (M = 9.8) and of a full range of large ensemble types and ensemble age levels rated how much they pay attention to 82…

This study aimed to develop a scale which could be used as a valid way to show the evidence of recovery-oriented services. A 51-item scale was developed to assess both the component processes and outcomes of recovery. A sample of 471 participants administered the questionnaire. The factor analysis yielded a 45-item scale with six subscales,…

Background: In the field of intellectual disabilities (ID), the quality of life concept has been developing rapidly in Chinese societies including Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan. However, there is a lack of locally validated instruments to measure the quality of life of people with ID. The study reported in this paper attempted to validate…