This study deals with the instructional efficiency of integrating text and animation into computer-based science instruction. The participants were 84 seventh-grade students in a private primary school in Istanbul. The efficiency of instruction was measured by mental effort and performance level of the learners. The results of the study showed…

This dissertation focused on master's education cohorts at a small midwestern university. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between various demographic factors and other student characteristics as they were reported on a survey instrument. Of particular interest were those responses to attitudinal questions…

Over the past decade in the United States, levelled texts, or "little books" with finely graduated levelling of text difficulty, have regained their status as a literacy staple for beginning readers. Despite their resurgence, questions remain regarding the reliability and quality of these books. In this study, we conducted a detailed…

The authors of this study endeavor to explore the negative opinions and perceptions of graduate students in business and social science programs, regarding their required statistics and research methods courses. The general sense of instructors of such courses is that students dread and resent having to take courses dealing with statistics and…

Background: Stereotype threat research revealed that negative stereotypes can disrupt the performance of persons targeted by such stereotypes. This paper contributes to stereotype threat research by providing evidence that domain identification and the difficulty level of test items moderate stereotype threat effects on female students' maths…

The typical method of presenting supply and demand in high school classes often leaves students with an impression that markets are simple and function effortlessly. In reality, the effectiveness of markets depends on the quality of complex institutions such as private property and property-rights enforcement. Students often do not realize that…

This study puts the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson 2005) to the test with respect to its predictions of the effects of changes in task complexity ([plus or minus] few elements) and task condition ([plus or minus] monologic) on L2 performance. 44 learners of Dutch performed both a simple and a complex oral task in either a monologic or a dialogic…

This study attempted to explore the influence of causal elements (ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck) as the strongest elements of locus of control predicting students' academic achievement satisfaction among foreign students. Based on locus of control scale invented by Rotter (1966), the findings obtained from 210 foreign students in…

This article reports on a psychometric study examining the validity and reliability of the My Class Inventory-Short Form for Teachers, an accountability measure for elementary school counselors to use as they evaluate aspects of their school counseling programs. As a companion inventory to the student version of the My Class Inventory-Short Form…

A special case of examinee choice, the Optional Essay Problem, is examined from the point of view of test equating. The Optional Essay Problem involves equating essay scores when the examinees are required to select an optional essay topic from a list of topics in addition to taking a mandatory test required of all examinees. The conditions that…

The Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, which produces vocabulary instructional materials for test takers, is in the process of determining the difficulty values of nontechnical words in the English language. To this end, the Foundation writes test items for vocabulary words and tests them in schools. The items are then calibrated using the…

In this study, the ability of test development staff to predict the difficulty of analogy items was explored. The nature of the item attributes that contributed to test writers' predictions of difficulty as well as actual item difficulty was also investigated. The two expert test writers studied were quite good at predicting item difficulty. Item…

Item bias has been a major concern for test developers during recent years. The Mantel-Haenszel statistic has been among the preferred methods for identifying biased items. The statistic's performance in identifying uniform bias in simulated data modeled by producing various levels of difference in the (item difficulty) b-parameter for reference…

Results support the general conclusion that the disposition to respond in either a reflective or impulsive fashion influences the problem-solving efficiency and strategy behavior of elementary school children. The relative impact of cognitive style on problem solving varied with developmental level and the type of problem solved. (Author/BJG)

This study attempts to develop a satisfactory child version of the linguistic task of judging grammaticality. With a nondifferentially reinforced forced-choice procedure, it was found that responses of 48 children (aged 5 and 7) varied as a function of the grammatical complexity of stimulus sentences. (Author/GO)