Assessing the Effect of Language Demand in Bundles of Math Word Problems

Differential bundle functioning (DBF) analyses were conducted to determine whether seventh and eighth grade second language learners (SLLs) had lower probabilities of answering bundles of math word problems correctly that had heavy language demands, when compared to non-SLLs of equal math proficiency. Math word problems on each of four test forms (two at Grade 7 and two at Grade 8) were bundled together if they used the passive voice, conditional clause, relative clause, or a combination of any two. The results showed that the average total scores for SLLs was significantly lower than that for non-SLLs on each test form. However, only two bundles (passive voice and conditional clause at Grade 7 on Form 2) indicated statistically significant DBF against SLLs in favor of matched non-SLLs. An additional step was taken to determine whether the two bundles that showed statistically significant DBF against SLLs had biased the mean total scores for this group.The Walker, Zhang, Banks, and Cappaert (2012) procedure established for this purpose showed that this was not the case. Implications of the results are provided as well as suggestions for future research.     

Diagnostic Model for Assessing the Effect of Developmental Issues on Career Action

The authors describe a Diagnostic Model for Assessing the Effect of Developmental Issues on Career Action that is designed to help career counselors diagnose problems that are interfering with clients' career development and to determine appropriate interventions.     

Assessing the Development of Relationships: A New Measure

This paper describes the development and application of a procedure (The Relationship World Index) to measure the development of intimate relationships. Grounded in symbolic interaction theory, the Relationship World Index is a measure of agreement on important aspects of relationships between members of intimate dyads. The development of the measure was guided by assumptions inherent in symbolic interactionism that predict the emergence of a shared construction of reality that bonds relationship members. Research results are presented providing evidence for the reliability and validity of the measure.     

Assessing psychological health: the contribution of psychological strengths

Balanced assessment of mental health involves assessing well-being and strengths as well as psychopathology. The character strengths of curiosity, gratitude, hope, optimism and forgiveness are assessed in 214 new undergraduates and their relationships to mental health, subjective well-being and self-esteem explored. Scoring the mental health scale for psychiatric caseness, case and non-case students did not differ in character strengths, positive affect or life satisfaction, supporting a dual-factor model. Hope pathways and gratitude predicted mental health. Gratitude, hope agency and exploratory curiosity predicted positive affect. Gratitude and hope agency predicted life satisfaction. Hope agency, hope pathways, exploratory curiosity and gratitude predicted self-esteem, with absorption curiosity as a negative predictor. The benefits of assessing strengths are discussed and interventions designed to develop them.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of Integrity Tests: A Review

Integrity tests, and other methods of assessing "honesty," are widely used in pre-employment screening, as most employers want to minimize dishonest and counterproductive behavior among their employees. This review applies a structured framework to the research literature to assess the general effectiveness of integrity tests. The framework employed evaluates integrity tests in terms of their scope, accuracy (reliability), relevance (validity), fairness, acceptability, and practicality. Such a framework based on these six aspects allows for an objective and systematic analysis of the qualities of integrity tests, as well as a structure for the evaluation of other methods of assessing honesty and integrity. For both narrow, overt measures of integrity and broader personality-based measures, research has shown favorable evidence of reliability, validity, fairness, and practicality. Even though in terms of acceptability research has indicated that integrity tests are viewed neither positively nor negatively, there is still considerable debate surrounding the issues of false positive rates and labeling. Comparisons with other methods of assessing honesty and integrity are also reviewed.     

The Effect of Religiosity on Life Satisfaction in a Secularized Context: Assessing the Relevance of Believing and Belonging

The positive relationship between religiosity and life satisfaction is well-established. This relationship is, however, likely to vary across cultural contexts and different religious affiliations. Furthermore, research is needed to uncover why religion is relevant for life satisfaction. Addressing these issues, we investigate what dimensions of being religious play a role in the life satisfaction of individuals with different religious affiliations, including the understudied Muslim category, in the highly secularized Dutch context. We examine ‘believing’, which captures how religion provides meaning and a coherent worldview, and ‘belonging’, which comprises both cultural benefits of being embedded in a congregation with a shared framework of meaning and structural benefits due to more social ties. Analyses of the NEtherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study (n = 5312) first indicate that Muslims display significantly lower life satisfaction than the non-religious, which appears to be due to their underprivileged social position rather than intra-religious factors of believing and belonging. Second, we find that Catholics experience significant life satisfaction benefits compared to those who are not religious, and that only belonging plays a role in this association. Next to the beneficial effect of the structural aspect of belonging, which revolves around social ties, a cultural aspect of religious belonging appears to be salient, suggesting that an important life satisfaction advantage of religious communities lies in their ability to foster a sense of solidarity and commitment through a shared framework of meaning. We make several recommendations for further research based on these findings.     

Varieties of Reasoning: Assessing Adequacy

Helmut Reich's theory of relational and contextual reasoning is a courageous initiative for the resolution of cognitive conflicts between apparently incompatible or incommensurable views. Built upon Piagetian logico‐mathematical reasoning, cognitive complexity theory, and dialectical and analogical reasoning, it includes the development of a both/and logic inclusive of binary either/or logic. Reich provides philosophic, theoretical, and even initial empirical support for the development of this form of reasoning along with a heuristic for its application. A valuable step beyond the limits of binary, static, and formal reasoning, it takes relationship, context, and perspectival variations seriously in an explicitly reflective and iterative system. We can and do address conflicts not resolvable by conventional appeals to logic or evidence, including those at epistemic boundaries or produced by belief‐commitment differences. Although this form of reasoning has real promise, including stepping beyond complementarity in the religion‐science dialogue, it seems better directed to causally explanatory theories than to other forms of rendering meaning. Finally, its coextension requirement may render it problematic where functionally coherent explananda cannot be identified or are themselves produced or constituted by a belief system.     

方差分析的统计检验力和效果大小的常用方法比较

本文对用方差分析统计检验力和效果大小进行估计的几种不同方法作了简要的介绍和比较。     

Assessing the process of desensitization therapy: Five practical measures

Assessment of phobic behavior has included self-report, physiological, and in vivobehavioral measures. While self-report measures are convenient, they suffer from subject bias and a low predictive validity. Physiological and in vivobehavioral measures are often too cumbersome to implement in standard clinical practice. The current study investigated the validity of five convenient measures of phobic behavior during the process of desensitization therapy. Responses of 14 clinically phobic patients were compared on phobic and neutral scenes presented within the context of systematic desensitization therapy. Phobic scenes resulted in less clarity of scene visualization, a longer latency to clear scene visualization, higher subjective units of discomfort (SUDs) at clear visualization, a longer latency to relaxation, and higher SUDs at relaxation. The measures seemed to reflect accurately the process and stages of desensitization therapy and showed low to high intercorrelations. The pragmatic value of these measures is discussed, as well as suggestions for future validational research.     

Assessing Hypochondriasis: Findings on the Survey of Health Concerns

We describe a brief self-report measure for assessing hypochondriacal fears in adults. Called the Survey of Health Concerns (SHC), the measure was developed using DSM IV criteria for diagnosing hypochondriacal disorder as a guide. The measure was standardized on a sample of 188 college students. It was shown to have good internal and temporal reliability over a 2-week period. Moreover, scores on the SHC correlated significantly with worry proneness as measured by the Penn State Worry Questionnaire, and with the Hs scale of the MMPI-2, which together support the convergent validity of the measure. While men and women scored the same, participants who were being treated for a medical condition scored higher than those who were not being treated. Men who were under a doctor's care scored especially high, although this was based on a small sample of men and the effect could be spurious. A principal component factor analysis revealed two primary factors: one that described participants who felt poorly, made frequent trips to the doctor, and were fearful of illness and dying, and another that described participants who were particularly fearful of infectious diseases and took active steps to avoid becoming sick. Relatively little is known about hypochondriacal disorder. One reason for the dearth of knowledge in this area is that there has been no practical and reliable way to assess hypochondriacal fears, or more generally speaking, people's tendency to worry about their health. The SHC may help to fill this void. Results are admittedly preliminary and further study in medical settings is needed.     

Assessing Parameter Invariance in the BLIM: Bipartition Models

In knowledge space theory, the knowledge state of a student is the set of all problems he is capable of solving in a specific knowledge domain and a knowledge structure is the collection of knowledge states. The basic local independence model (BLIM) is a probabilistic model for knowledge structures. The BLIM assumes a probability distribution on the knowledge states and a lucky guess and a careless error probability for each problem. A key assumption of the BLIM is that the lucky guess and careless error probabilities do not depend on knowledge states (invariance assumption). This article proposes a method for testing the violations of this specific assumption. The proposed method was assessed in a simulation study and in an empirical application. The results show that (1) the invariance assumption might be violated by the empirical data even when the model’s fit is very good, and (2) the proposed method may prove to be a promising tool to detect invariance violations of the BLIM.     

Assessing the stigma of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) stigma is considered a vague concept, because it is not easily assessed. The purpose of this article is to review methodological approaches for assessing TB stigma. We reviewed the published studies and the gray literature. We also present the main features of a qualitative and quantitative assessment of TB stigma, which has been done in one specific project in Nicaragua. As a whole, we illustrate the variety of TB stigma in terms of domains, consequences, determinants and methods used; some features emerge more frequently than others from the studies. However, results of the review show a relative scarcity of the TB stigma assessment experiences, mainly in looking at the consequences for the TB patient and in the use of quantitative methods and scales. Additional assessment studies in diverse contexts are needed so that stigma will be considered a priority in the organization of care for people affected by tuberculosis.     

Assessing offenders: dying for reprieve

As is true for those who face death, the trauma of arrest and conviction for a crime and subsequent imprisonment takes the individual through a series of psychological stages, In the offender, these defenses are to some extent prescribed by the culture. The nature of and the person's adaptation to this process has not been previously recognized and argues for an assessment approach that emphasizes developmental rather than static formulations. Examination and treatment implications are discussed.