Of the several measures of optimism presently available in the literature, the Life Orientation Test (LOT; Scheier & Carver, 1985) has been the most widely used in empirical research. This article explores, confirms, and cross-validates the factor structure of the Chinese version of the LOT with ordinal data by using robust weighted least…

African Americans have served in the United States Armed Forces in nearly every conflict in the nation's history. However, the State--through official government policy, ad hoc decisions of military commanders, or statements by prominent civilians--was rarely comfortable with Black military service. Throughout most of American history, the various…

Spatial skills have been shown to be important to success in an engineering curriculum, and some question if poor spatial skills prevent students from entering STEM fields or if students with weak spatial skills avoid engineering disciplines believed to highly spatially-oriented. Veurink and Hamlin (2011) found that freshmen students entering…

This paper compares two alternative scoring methods--multiple regression and classification trees--for an automated speech scoring system used in a practice environment. The two methods were evaluated on two criteria: construct representation and empirical performance in predicting human scores. The empirical performance of the two scoring models…

Because high stakes are now attached to standardized assessments of student progress, policy makers, administrators, practitioners, and parents must understand how to most effectively and accurately measure the performance of all students, including students with learning disabilities (LD). To accomplish this, test accommodations are provided on…

As the demand for online learning environments grow in higher education, so does the need for systematic application of learning and educational theory to the design, development and delivery of assessment strategies within these environments. However, there is little guidance in the form of principled design frameworks that can assist the design…

This study examined the relationship between social functioning and emergent academic development in a sample of 467 preschool children (M=55.9 months old, SD=3.8). Teachers reported on children's aggression, attention problems, and prosocial skills. Preliteracy, language, and early mathematics skills were assessed with standardized tests. Better…

Automatic item generation represents a relatively new but rapidly evolving research area where cognitive and psychometric theories are used to produce tests that include items generated using computer technology. Automatic item generation requires two steps. First, test development specialists create item models, which are comparable to templates…

Although many academic organizations offer formal mentoring programs, little is known about how individual characteristics of peer mentors and their proteges interact to reduce new-student stress. First-year college students participated in a peer-mentoring program designed to reduce stress. The results of this study demonstrated that proteges who…

Despite a number of research studies investigating the Yes-No vocabulary test format, one main question remains unanswered: What is the best scoring procedure to adjust for testee overestimation of vocabulary knowledge? Different scoring methodologies have been proposed based on the inclusion and selection of nonwords in the test. However, there…

Talent Development Centers are just one of many tools every family, teacher, and gifted advocate should have in their tool box. To understand the importance of Talent Development Centers, it is essential to also understand the Academic Talent Search Program. Talent Search participants who obtain scores comparable to college-bound high school…

One might assume that familiarity with a scene or previous encounters with objects embedded in a scene would benefit subsequent search for those items. However, in a series of experiments we show that this is not the case: When participants were asked to subsequently search for multiple objects in the same scene, search performance remained…

Executive function mechanisms underpinning language-related effects on theory of mind understanding were examined in a sample of 165 preschoolers. Verbal labels were manipulated to identify relevant perspectives on an explicit false belief task. In Experiment 1 with 4-year-olds (N = 74), false belief reasoning was superior in the fully and…

The process of formative assessment in universities has the potential to engage students in reflection and to take greater ownership of their learning. We report on a study involving 104 students taking a statistics course in a degree programme in rehabilitation science in Hong Kong. The assessment strategy was redesigned to include a weekly…

This article focuses on how temperament, pubertal maturation, and perception of parenting behaviors affect the propensity to date in early adolescence (mean age = 13.55). Hypotheses are tested with a representative sample of 2,230 Dutch adolescents, the TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). The results suggest that adolescents…