Objectives: empathy brings people closer and facilitates communication in almost all the fields of daily life. Having been an important dimension of foster care, empathetic skills should be developed in a foster family. In this study, we aimed to determine the empathic level of the foster families. Methods: this cross-sectional study on foster…

In their 2016 work, Aguirre-Urreta et al. provided a contribution to the literature on causal measurement models that enhances clarity and stimulates further thinking. Aguirre-Urreta et al. presented a form of statistical identity involving mapping onto the portion of the parameter space involving the nomological net, relationships between the…

This paper is devoted to the study of correlation between semantic and pragmatic potential of a compound word, which functions in informal speech, and the mechanisms of secondary nomination, which realizes the potential of semantic-pragmatic features of colloquial compounds. The relevance and the choice of the research question is based on the…

We report 3 experiments investigating novel sorts of inference, such as: A or B or both. Therefore, possibly (A and B). Where the contents were sensible assertions, for example, "Space tourism will achieve widespread popularity in the next 50 years or advances in material science will lead to the development of antigravity materials in the…

Objective of this research is to investigate identity functions and empathetic tendencies of teacher candidates. Sample consists of 232 teacher candidates in social studies teacher education. Survey model is preferred to investigate the difference between identity functions and empathetic tendencies of teacher candidates. And also correlational…

How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer draws on quantitative research designs. By measuring the inputs and processes that produce the highest levels of virtue among participants according to some reasonable criterion, in this view, we can determine which programs engender the most desired results.…

Many of the mediation analyses reported in the literature are based on concurrent or single-occasion data sets. The 2 overarching themes of the present article are: Results of concurrent mediations are inherently ambiguous, and researchers would be wise to conduct mediations on longitudinal data sets instead. An example included here demonstrates…

Although missing data are often viewed as a challenge for applied researchers, in fact missing data can be highly beneficial. Specifically, when the amount of missing data on specific variables is carefully controlled, a balance can be struck between statistical power and research costs. This article presents the issue of planned missing data by…

This report presents results on a parallel implementation of the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm for multidimensional latent variable models. The developments presented here are based on code that parallelizes both the E step and the M step of the parallel-E parallel-M algorithm. Examples presented in this report include item response…

We propose a crowdsourcing-based framework to iteratively and rapidly bootstrap a dialog system from scratch for a new domain. We leverage the open-source modular HALEF dialog system to deploy dialog applications. We illustrate the usefulness of this framework using four different prototype dialog items with applications in the educational domain…

Purpose: Current approaches to assessing sentence-level speech variability rely on measures that quantify variability across utterances and use normalization procedures that alter raw trajectory data. The current work tests the feasibility of a less restrictive nonlinear approach--recurrence quantification analysis (RQA)--via a procedural example…

Cognitive mapping is assumed to be through hippocampus-dependent place learning rather than striatum-dependent response learning. However, we proposed that either type of spatial learning, as long as it involves encoding metric relations between locations and reference points, could lead to a cognitive map. Furthermore, the fewer reference points…

This paper is concerned with investigating the integration of quantitative and qualitative data in mixed methods research and whether, in spite of its challenges, it can be of positive benefit to many investigative studies. The paper introduces the topic, defines the terms with which this subject deals and undertakes a literature review to outline…

We examined whether the distinction between generic and nongeneric language provides toddlers with a rapid and efficient means to learn about kinds. In Experiment 1, we examined 30-month-olds' willingness to extend atypical properties to members of an unfamiliar category when the properties were introduced in 1 of 3 ways: (a) using a generic noun…

National and international rankings of universities are now an accepted part of the higher education landscape. Rankings aggregate different performance measures into a single scale and therefore depend on the methods and weights used to aggregate. The most common method is to scale each variable relative to the highest performing entity prior to…