Background: Understanding lexical abilities in infants and toddlers is important, yet no single tool can be used. Aims: To perform a validation of a new tool (known as the Picture Naming Game, or "PiNG") for assessing lexical comprehension and production in toddlers and to obtain developmental trends for Italian children. Methods &…

The current study assessed the measurement equivalence of the Wong & Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) with three groups of Chinese university students. Two research sessions were conducted--one in Beijing, China with university students (N = 680), and the other in Calgary, Canada where two groups of Chinese students were administered…

Investigations of contributors to and consequences of the parent-child relationship require accurate assessment of the nature and quality of parenting. The present study describes the development and psychometric evaluation of the Laboratory Parenting Assessment Battery (Lab-PAB), an observational rating system that assesses parenting behaviors…

Given substantial interest in the traits conceived of as part of the "Dark Triad"--psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism--assessment of these traits is of great importance. The Dirty Dozen (DD; Jonason & Webster, 2010) is a brief measure of the Dark Triad constructs that uses 4 items to assess each of these constructs. In the present…

The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II) is a self-report measure designed to assess experiential avoidance as conceptualized in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The current study is the first to evaluate the psychometric properties of the AAQ-II in a large sample of adults (N = 376) with mild to moderate levels of depression…

Goal attainment scaling (GAS) holds promise as an idiographic approach for measuring outcomes of psychosocial interventions in community settings. GAS has been criticized for untested assumptions of scaling level (i.e., interval or ordinal), inter-individual equivalence and comparability, and reliability of coding across different behavioral…

The aim was to develop a new instrument for measuring length of sleep as well as television and computer habits in school-age children. A questionnaire was constructed for use when children visit the school health care unit. Three aspects of the validity of the questionnaire were examined: its face validity, content validity, and construct…

Several government agencies are seeking quality improvement in environmental policy documents by asking for the implementation of Plain Language (PL) guidelines. Our mixed-methods research examines whether the application of certain PL guidelines affects the comprehension and perceptions of readers of environmental policy documents. Results show…

The language of non-native speakers is less reliable than the language of native speakers in conveying the speaker's intentions. We propose that listeners expect such reduced reliability and that this leads them to adjust the manner in which they process and represent non-native language by representing non-native language in less detail.…

Aim: The aim of the study was to investigate the construct validity of the Quality of Upper Extremity Skills Test (QUEST) in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Method: A total of 170 QUEST assessments from a convenience sample of 94 children with CP involved in clinical and research treatment programmes (54 males, 40 females; mean age 6y 10mo, SD…

Outcomes assessments are gaining great attention in higher education because of increased demand for accountability. These assessments are widely used by U.S. higher education institutions to measure students' college-level knowledge and skills, including students who speak English as a second language (ESL). For the past decade, the increasing…

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the use of Latent Growth Modeling (LGM) as a method for estimating reliability of Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) progress-monitoring data. The LGM approach permits the error associated with each measure to differ at each time point, thus providing an alternative method for examining of the…

Students in the USA have fallen near the bottom in international competitions and tests in mathematics and science. It is thought that extrinsic factors such as family, community, and schools might be more influential than intrinsic attitudes toward science interest. However, there are relatively few valid and reliable measures of intrinsic…

Prior work shows that children can make inductive inferences about objects based on their labels rather than their appearance (Gelman, 2003). A separate line of research shows that children's trust in a speaker's label is selective. Children accept labels from a reliable speaker over an unreliable speaker (e.g., Koenig & Harris, 2005). In the…

The Particulate Nature of Matter and Chemical Bonding Diagnostic Instrument (Othman J., Treagust D. F. and Chandrasegaran A. L., (2008), "Int. J. Sci. Educ.," 30(11), 1531-1550) is used to investigate college students' understanding of two chemistry concepts: particulate nature of matter and chemical bonding. The instrument, originally…