The conventional approaches to mediation analysis such as path analysis and structural equation modeling typically involve specifying two structural models, one for the mediator and the other for the outcome. We employ an alternative approach that avoids some strong identification assumptions invoked by the conventional approaches. By applying a…

Components of the home environment are associated with children's academic functioning. The accumulation of risks in the home are expected to prove more detrimental to achievement than any one risk alone, but the processes accounting for this relation are unclear. Using an index of cumulative home risk (CHR) inclusive of protective factors, as…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the payoffs of a corporate portal in an academic institution in Oman and its impacts on business processes and employees. Design/methodology/approach: The study included 100 employees, mostly instructors, in an academic institution. The questionnaire included indicators related to the…

Because consumer opinions to an increasing extent affect the structure and management of the U.S. food system, it is important for social scientists to accurately model consumer trust in this system so they can better understand and anticipate public responses to existing or proposed food-related regulatory policies and facilitate effective…

In longitudinal studies, investigators often measure multiple variables at multiple time points and are interested in investigating individual differences in patterns of change on those variables. Furthermore, in behavioral, social, psychological, and medical research, investigators often deal with latent variables that cannot be observed directly…

In a balanced design (i.e. a design in which all cells have the same number of observations), if the effects in the linear model are random and normally distributed, the distribution of the ratio of any sum of squares (s.s.) in the ANOVA to the expected value of its mean square (m.s.) has a [chi][superscript 2]-distribution. In this note, we…

This study investigated the component skills underlying reading fluency in a heterogeneous sample of 527 eighth grade students. Based on a hypothetical measurement model and successive testing of nested models, structural equation modeling revealed that naming speed, decoding, and language were uniquely associated with reading fluency. These…

This study involved four age groups: 13-15-, 23-25-, 33-35-, and 43-45-yr-olds. All adult groups involved persons with university education and persons with low education. Participants (1) solved tasks addressed to spatial, propositional, and social reasoning, (2) evaluated their own performance and the difficulty of the tasks, and (3) answered an…

This three paper dissertation presents and tests a model for effective intergroup communication. The first paper reviews evidence of positive and negative consequences of interracial contact and presents a theoretical model of intergroup dialogue (IGD) focused on promoting positive and avoiding negative outcomes. The second paper tests the…

It is generally believed that Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce has a great impact on business performance improvement. Considerable research also shows that another dependent variable, B2B e-commerce success, can be a good overall measure of B2B systems. This paper investigated and examined the impact of several factors, which are either…

Purpose: This study tested a theoretical model of volunteering benefits and examined the mechanism through which volunteering benefits older adults. Design and Methods: This is a 2-wave study of 253 older adult volunteers serving in 10 volunteer programs. Older volunteers completed the mailed surveys in 2005 and 2006. Structural equation modeling…

Friendships are essential for adolescent social development. However, they may be pursued for varying motives, which, in turn, may predict similarity in friendships via social selection or social influence processes, and likely help to explain friendship quality. We examined the effect of early adolescents' (N = 374, 12-14 years) intrinsic and…

Cramer's (1999) model of self-concealment and willingness to seek counseling was extended to examine the role of positive and negative social experiences in a sample of 235 college students reporting a psychological, academic, or career issue. Structural equation modeling indicated that self-concealment predicted willingness through the mediators…

Ordinal variables are common in many empirical investigations in the social and behavioral sciences. Researchers often apply the maximum likelihood method to fit structural equation models to ordinal data. This assumes that the observed measures have normal distributions, which is not the case when the variables are ordinal. A better approach is…

Researchers often have expectations that can be expressed in the form of inequality constraints among the parameters of a structural equation model. It is currently not possible to test these so-called informative hypotheses in structural equation modeling software. We offer a solution to this problem using M"plus." The hypotheses are…