A total of over 400 parents, teachers, therapists, and child development specialists in early intervention and preschool programs evaluated the ABILITIES Index, which describes the functional abilities and limitations of children across 9 domains. Satisfaction ratings across five dimensions were generally positive, with parents consistently rating…

Highlights issues and controversies concerning current race-related educational research. Contends that some critics believe research sacrifices empirical objectivity for political goals. Partisan research supporters respond that all research begins with untested assumptions and an acknowledgment of purpose does not signify a skewed methodology.…

Describes research on the development of a measure of student metacognition. The brief, domain-independent measure serves as a collateral measure in construct validation, supporting exploration of the self-regulatory demands of performance assessment. Results show that metacognition can be directly and explicitly measured in the context of…

This article comments on two studies (EC 629 875) that investigated the validity of a set of 15 general growth outcomes (GGOs) for identifying young children with disabilities. It argues that without additional efforts focusing on the nature of GGOs, the ultimate utility of the outcome measures will be limited. (Contains references.) (CR)

The current study findings refute the recent claim that marginality theory lacks construct validity. Cultural marginalization is significantly related to depressive symptoms in Korean American, Chinese American, and Japanese American parents and adolescents living in the United States. Correlational analyses indicate that adolescents' depressive…

Introduction: Tremendous advances in health care have been made through the development of evidence-based medicine (EBM). Studies show that physicians face barriers in practice, preventing the effective use of the best evidence available. Insight into these barriers should pave the way for an action plan to remove them. The aim of this study was…

The "Chinese College Stress Scale" was developed to ascertain stress in university students. Results suggested that the psychometric properties of the "Chinese College Stress Scale" were satisfactory. Overall, student stress was primarily related to academic, personal, and negative life events. Approximately 8% of Chinese…

Assessments in English that are constructed for native English speakers may not provide valid inferences about the achievement of English language learners (ELLs). The linguistic complexity of the test items that are not related to the content of the assessment may increase the measurement error, thus reducing the reliability of the assessment.…

Validity and parent-child agreement of the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children-Parent Report (SPAI-C-P) were examined in a racially diverse sample of 158 students in Grades 5 through 8 (87 girls; ages 10 to 14; M = 11.53) and their caregivers. Children completed the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI-C), and…

This study used a sample of 501 families from the Mississippi Delta region to examine the feasibility of the Family Stress Model for understanding adolescent suicidal ideation. The results indicated that family economic pressure was related to parental depressive symptoms, which, in turn, was related to parental hostile behavior and physical…

As our world becomes increasingly multicultural in nature, multilingual skills constitute an everyday phenomenon in schools. Since most of the second-language research has focused on school-age students, more research had to be conducted with language-minority students at the kindergarten level in order for psychologists and educators to develop…

This study examined the psychometric properties of performance measures for three novel, interactive virtual reality vignette exercises developed to assess social competency skills of at-risk adolescents. Performance data were collected from 117 African-American male 15-17 year olds. Data for 18 performance measures were obtained, based on…

Research studies testing longitudinal relations between childhood physical health measures and adulthood sub-clinical depressive symptoms are rare. In the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study, longitudinal relations of parental reports of the global physical health of the child (1 = good, 2 = moderately good, 3 = average/not good) and of…

A fair and valid assessment for every child, as mandated by legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 and the Improving America's School Act of 1994, must consider the complexity inherent in assessments for subgroups of students. Due to the rapid growth of the population of English language learners (ELLs) in the United…

Two types of social goals associated with students' academic performance have received attention from researchers. One is the social responsibility goal and the other is the social relationship goal. While several scales have been validated for measuring social relationship and social responsibility goals in academic settings, few studies have…