This article reports on forensic letters written by physicians specializing in identifying children who have experienced maltreatment. These writers face an extraordinary exigence in that they must provide an opinion as to whether a child has experienced abuse without specifically diagnosing abuse and thus crossing into a legal domain. Their…

Psychologists have discovered a phenomenon called "Belief Bias" in which subjects rate the strength of arguments based on the believability of the conclusions. This paper reports the results of a small qualitative pilot study of undergraduate students who had previously taken an algebra-based introduction to statistics class. The subjects in this…

Do preschoolers think adults know more about everything than children? Or do they recognize that there are some things that children might know more about than adults? Three-, four-, and five-year olds (N = 65) were asked to decide whether an adult or child informant would better be able to answer a variety of questions about the nutritional value…

In this study, 600 school teachers completed a 116-item questionnaire consisting of questions regarding classroom communication as well as a general list of social skills. The aim of the study was to compare the self-perceptions, given by the teachers of art and the teachers of science and the male and female teachers to the statements of social…

As canons for trustworthiness developed explicitly in the discourse of qualitative inquiry, the emphasis was on procedural matters rather than fundamentally relational ones. A nod was made to the relational in such strategies as "member checks" but the issues of how the evaluator actually relates to participants and to the larger communities of…

The purpose of this historical review was to trace the credible leadership construct of trustworthiness, integrity, honesty, and consistency in leadership theory development during the last 100 years in the United States. Theory focus, key U.S. pivotal events, and follower importance influenced the construct's occurrence in leadership theory. …

Students are making an increased use of the Web as a source for solving information problems for academic assignments. To extend current research about search behavior during navigation on the Web, this study examined whether students are able to spontaneously reflect, from an epistemic perspective, on the information accessed, and whether their…

The paper aimed to investigate the parents' attitudes toward their daughters' education in tribal areas of district Dera Ghazi Khan (Pakistan). To achieve the objectives four research questions were established. Focus of the questions was to examine the significance of girls' education for tribal parents. Existing and expected role of tribal…

This case study focuses on the impact of historical film on 20 high school students using document surveys, group, and personal interviews. The study examined the impact that two films had on students' historical understanding, the students' awareness of this impact, and their use of the tools of historical inquiry. The results indicated film…

As digital technologies are expanding the power and reach of research, they are also raising complex issues. These include complications in ensuring the validity of research data; standards that do not keep pace with the high rate of innovation; restrictions on data sharing that reduce the ability of researchers to verify results and build on…

This study tested two models of instructor credibility as a potential mediator of instructors' prosocial communication behaviors (e.g., confirmation, clarity, and nonverbal immediacy) and students' learning outcomes. Participants included 1,416 undergraduate students from four different institutions across the United States. Results of structural…

The experience of teaching informal logic (sometimes called practical logic) at the introductory level over the last fifteen years has allowed the author the opportunity to identify some interesting problems. These problems have been encountered by students attempting to understand some of the ideas presented in the informal logic course and by…

The foundation for a successful college is framed by both institutional values exhibited in its mission, culture, structure, and organization and the way the college implements these values. Thus the college's institutional values must be real and respected. As Schein (1996) would say, these institutional values must be some of the things that…

The article addresses the effective use of full-time and part-time faculty in transforming an institutionalized marginalized professional studies unit into an academic unit with greater academic credibility, as perceived by traditional colleagues and accreditors. Recommendations are supported by a case study narrative from the experiences of the…

The aims of this study are to identify health concerns and behaviors, to understand why some concerns are more worrisome than others, and to learn what information sources are relied on for a young age cohort--7th grade students--in two poor and near-poor school districts. Focus groups--one each of girls and boys--in each of two public school…