A large literature emphasizes the importance of testing for measurement equivalence in scales that may be used as observed variables in structural equation modeling applications. When the same construct is measured across more than one developmental period, as in a longitudinal study, it can be especially critical to establish measurement…

The older adult population is growing faster than any other cohort of people. By the year 2011, the baby boomers will start turning age 65, presenting a problem for public policy and health care systems. One of the key components of successful aging is the maintenance of good health. Numerous studies have extensively documented the link between…

This study sought to broaden the understanding of the role that academic professions play in shaping the values and attitudes of faculty toward CES. This study explored faculty perceptions regarding the factors that encourage or dissuade them in the pursuit of CES within public administration programs. As a framework for research, a conceptual…

The theoretical argument of the current research is that athletic departments have been effective in attaining their conflicting goals mainly because they have become highly effective in managing institutional rules. Neo-institutionalism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991), loose coupling (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), and patterns of bureaucracy (Gouldner, 1954)…

Social cognitive research has linked students' perceived academic capabilities, or self-efficacy, to academic choices, self-regulation, and performance in diverse contexts from reading comprehension to mathematical problem solving. This study addressed a need to investigate the interactions among prior achievement, self-efficacy, calibration (the…

In both the United States and Europe, concerns have been raised about whether preservice and in-service training succeeds in equipping teachers with the professional knowledge they need to deliver consistently high-quality instruction. This article investigates the significance of teachers' content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge for…

A structural equation modeling approach is used to assess the relationships among human capital endowments of school principals and characteristics of students at the middle school level. Human capital endowments are measured according to education, teacher experience, and administrator experience, while characteristics of students are assessed…

Using data from the National Early Head Start (EHS) Research and Evaluation Project (N = 1851), the current study examined relations among cumulative family and social risk, assessed during infancy and the preschool years, and children's prekindergarten achievement, self-regulatory skills, and problematic social behavior, testing if these…

This study examined relations among early family risk, children's behavioral regulation at 54 months and kindergarten, and academic achievement in first grade using data on 1298 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Family risk was indexed by ethnic…

This study investigated the effectiveness, in terms of the attainment of relevant learning outcomes, of the types of learning promoted by educational features commonly incorporated in course management systems. Twenty-one courses with significant use of the Internet, but with face-to-face teaching as the predominant instructional mode, were…

Prior studies have suggested that living in high-risk neighborhoods is associated with youths' maladjustment. Youths who maintained favorable outcomes, despite being exposed to such neighborhood risks, were considered resilient. Using structural equation modeling techniques, longitudinal data of 877 youths from the Denver Youth Survey were…

Objective:This report extends earlier accounts by addressing the effects of the Strong African American Families (SAAF) program across 65 months. Two hypotheses were tested: (a) Rural African American youths randomly assigned to participate in SAAF would demonstrate lower rates of alcohol use than would control youths more than 5 years later, and…

The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between adolescents' social cognitions regarding parenting practices and adolescents' prosocial behavioral tendencies. A mediation model was tested whereby the degree to which adolescents perceived their parents as responding appropriately to their prosocial and antisocial behaviors was…

A concrete example is used to illustrate maximum likelihood estimation of a structural equation model with two unknown parameters. The fitting function is found for the example, as are the vector of first-order partial derivatives, the matrix of second-order partial derivatives, and the estimates obtained from each iteration of the Newton-Raphson…

Researchers using structural equation modeling (SEM) aspire to learn about the world by seeking models with causal specifications that match the causal forces extant in the world. This quest for a model matching existing worldly causal forces constitutes an ontology that orients, or perhaps reorients, thinking about measurement validity. This…