The Structural Validity of Daidalos: A measure of career maturity

A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the structural validity of Daidalos, a 20‐item inventory designed to assess the factors that might inhibit or promote successful career decision making, or career maturity. The sample consisted of 776 high school students; 367 were male and 409 were female. Participants ranged in age from 16 to 54 years (M = 18). Goodness‐of‐fit statistics provided strong support for a two‐factor hierarchical model and slightly less for a five‐factor non‐hierarchical model. The two higher‐order factors were identified as a Pre‐process and a Process latent construct. Separate analysis for men and women showed that the model was far more appropriate for women than for men. Item loadings ranged from .46 to .81, first‐order factor intercorrelations ranged from ?.15 to .68, and the correlation between the two higher‐order factors was ?.42.     

Research in Religious Education: Content and Methods for the Postmodern and Global Era

This article presents an overview of how “Christian religious education” as a “polydoxical” discipline is being taught, based on a survey of 24 syllabi of graduate courses offered by scholars teaching in Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Catholic theological schools. The review offers an account of how the scholars frame the discipline in four dimensions: (1) how they define the nature and purpose of CRE; (2) how they describe and interpret the environment(s) for teaching and learning; (3) how they frame the “canon” of the discipline through texts and topics; and (4) the methods of teaching and learning employed.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Inattention,Hyperactivity-Impulsivity,and Reading: Kindergarten to Grade 2

Twin children from Australia, Scandinavia, and the United States were assessed for inattention, hyperactivity-impulsivity, and reading across the first 3 school years. Univariate behavior-genetic analyses indicated substantial heritability for all three variables in all years. Longitudinal analyses showed one genetic source operating across the time span and a second entering in the second school year for each variable, though possibly not reliable for inattention. Other analyses confirmed previous findings of pleiotropy (shared genes) between inattention and reading and showed that this genetic overlap is in place from kindergarten onwards and is restricted to one of the genetic sources that affect reading and inattention. The results extend previous conclusions about the developmental trajectories of inattention, hyperactivity-impulsivity, and reading and their relationships. Limitations of this study are discussed, as are educational implications.     

How to Measure Coach Burnout: An Evaluation of Three Burnout Measures

Although coach burnout has been studied for 30 years, what measure to use in this context has not yet been problematized. This study focuses on evaluating convergent and discriminant validity of three coach burnout measures by using multi-trait/multi-method analysis (CT-C[M-1]) model. We choose Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the two dimensional Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI), and a coach version of Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (CBQ). Our analysis shows that MBI and OLBI cover similar definitions of exhaustion and depersonalization/disengagement and that CBQ measures somewhat different dimensions. A problem for OLBI is a lack of discriminant validity due to high correlations between exhaustion and disengagement. For lack of personal accomplishment/reduced sense of accomplishment CBQ measures a somewhat different construct than MBI. Although all three measures have advantages and disadvantages, we promote CBQ since it discriminates between dimensions and covers important aspects of burnout in a sports context that the other two do not cover.     

Individual characteristics of students in vocational education moderating the relationship between school engagement and vocational identity

In any country, there is a group of students who are at risk of dropping out of school without any qualifications. This is detrimental for many of those students, because failure to graduate increases risks of unemployment and societal exclusion. To reduce this risk, specialized curricula aim to prepare these students for their working life by fostering the development of a vocational identity, that is, how they define themselves as workers. As a prerequisite to achieving this goal, students need to attend school and feel engaged with school. The curricula seek ways to stimulate emotional school engagement, taking into account the heterogeneous target group of students they serve. To address potential consequences of individual differences, this questionnaire study (N=996) conducted in the Netherlands explored how various individual characteristics of students in these specialized curricula moderated the relationship between emotional school engagement and vocational identity. Results show that stronger school engagement always coincided with a stronger vocational identity; however, the strength of the relationship varied. Stimulating emotional school engagement was specifically important for the subgroups of students who are young, less agreeable, less motivated, and less resilient. In order to foster the vocational identity of their students, the specialized curricula are recommended to draw nuanced conclusions and formulate refined strategies to effectively respond to the heterogeneous group of students who are at risk of dropping out.

     

Interactivity in Society: Locating an Elusive Concept

Interactivity has been identified as a core concept of new media, yet despite nearly three decades of study and analysis, we scarcely know what interactivity is, let alone what it does, and have scant insight into the conditions in which interactive processes are likely to be consequential for members of a social system. This article attempts to address this deficiency by critiquing three self-defeating tendencies and an erroneous assumption of interactivity research, then proposes four basic propositions around which systematic knowledge regarding interactivity in society may be built. In the spirit of bridging mass and interpersonal processes, a model of interactivity is proposed to initiate discussion about the concept as a cross-level and multivalent phenomenon—one with both positive and negative consequences—and to spur more socially relevant research. For interactivity to succeed as a concept, it must have some meaningful social and psychological relevance beyond its technical status as a property of media systems or message exchanges.     

Introduction to the Special Section on Knowledge Management in Postmodern Society

This introductory essay contextualizes and meditates on the three articles—Bhattacharya, Day, and Waller—presented in this special section on “Knowledge Management in Postmodern Society.” In the process it reflects on following points: (1) the capacity the university had in the past to incorporate the irregular and its loss in the contemporary university, (2) the devaluation of humanities and social sciences because of the reduction of the narrative as well as the reflective and critical thinking to mere doxa, (3) the competition from mass media on university's traditional role in knowledge dissemination and the building of the public sphere, (4) the oscillation of academy between Taylorism and post-Taylorism, (5) the possible role students can play in overcoming crisis faced by the university, and (6) the evolution of the binomial writing/reading in the shift to digitalization and the information society.     

The interactive effect of exercise and immunosuppressant cyclosporin A on immune function in mice

Abstract

The determination of the ventilatory threshold has been a persistent problem in research and clinical practice. Several computerized methods have been developed to overcome the subjectivity of visual methods but it remains unclear whether different computerized methods yield similar results. The purpose of this study was to compare nine regression-based computerized methods for the determination of the ventilatory threshold. Two samples of young and healthy volunteers (n = 30 each) participated in incremental treadmill protocols to volitional fatigue. The ventilatory data were averaged in 20-s segments and analysed with a computer program. Significant variance among methods was found in both samples (Sample 1: F = 11.50; Sample 2: F = 11.70, P < 0.001 for both). The estimates of the ventilatory threshold ranged from 2.47 litres · min^?1 (71%[Vdot]O_2max) to 3.13 litres · min^?1 (90%[Vdot]O_2max) in Sample 1 and from 2.37 litres · min^?1 (67%[Vdot]O_2max) to 3.03 litres · min^?1 (83%[Vdot]O_2max) in Sample 2. The substantial differences between methods challenge the practice of relying on any single computerized method. A standardized protocol, likely based on a combination of methods, might be necessary to increase the methodological consistency in both research and clinical practice.     

Family Stress Processes and Children's Self-Regulation

Economic hardship can affect children's development through child–caregiver interactions, which may mediate cascading effects of other family stress processes. This study examined, simultaneously, the relations of financial strain, caregiver general stress, and child–caregiver conflict—each measured at two time points—with child self-regulatory outcomes in a high-poverty sample (age 5–7 years; n = 343). Increase in child–caregiver conflict mediated negative relations between other processes and development of executive function. In contrast, only increase in financial strain had direct, negative association with development of delay of gratification and did not significantly mediate relations between any other process and children's outcomes. Results have implications for understanding effects of family stress on self-regulatory outcomes and for interventions with low-income families.