Efficacy of Skinfold Training Clinics: A Comparison between Clinic Trained and Experienced Testers

Abstract

In an attempt to differentiate more adequately between the terms motor ability and athletic participation in their relationship to some measurable aspects of personality, a group of 167 Pomona College junior and senior male students were classified both as to level of motor ability and participation in athletics and were administered the CPI. Utilizing a total test response derived from the sum of ranks of median scores, low and middle motor ability groups ranked higher in the main effects and within the nonathlete and intramural participation groups, but athletic participation did not appear to have any effect upon the measures studied. The pattern of results suggested an expectation hypothesis wherein higher ratings in the personality inventory might be achieved by groups of subjects who participated at a level which would be “expected” in relation to their motor ability.     

The influence of club-head kinematics on early ball flight characteristics in the golf drive

Despite many coaching and biomechanical texts describing how the kinematics of the club-head at impact lead to distance and accuracy of the ball flight, there is limited quantitative evidence supporting these assertions. The purpose of this study was to quantify the relationships between club-head kinematics and subsequent early ball flight characteristics during the golf drive. An opto-reflective system operating at 400 Hz was used to capture the swings of 21 male golfers using their own drivers. The 3D displacement data permitted the calculation of club-head kinematics at impact, as well as subsequent early ball flight characteristics. Using regression analyses, club-head kinematics at impact (velocity, orientation, path, and centeredness) were used to explain the variability in five dependent variables of early ball flight characteristics (resultant velocity, launch angle, side angle, back spin, and side spin). The results of the study indicated that club-head kinematics at impact explained a significant proportion of early ball flight characteristics (adjusted r ² = 0.71–0.82), even when generalized across individual clubs.     

Business Planning for Higher Education Institutions

Business planning is now an essential discipline for universities, polytechnics and colleges. Those which do not already have a corporate strategy will find they have to develop one in order to succeed in the new funding competition. The skills and attitudes required for successful business planning will have to be acquired and exploited alongside traditional academic strengths. In this article two management consultants who know higher education well explain how institutions can develop and benefit from a structured approach to business planning.     

Training preservice teachers to analyze and evaluate textbooks

Learning how to evaluate reading texts should be an important part of preservice training. This study used a simulated textbook selection process to compare differences in the consistency of experimental and control groups in evaluating textbooks. The experimental groups, who were required to define their criteria operationally, were more consistent in their evaluations than the control group, who used traditional checklists. Jacqueline C. Comas is assistant professor of education at the University of Florida in Gainesville where she teaches courses in language arts and children's literature. She is a former classroom teacher, has served as a reading consultant, a reading/language arts supervisor, and has worked with textbook adoption committees for the improvement of instructional materials since the late 1970s.     

The Hierarchy Consistency Index: Evaluating Person Fit for Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment

In this article, we introduce a person‐fit statistic called the hierarchy consistency index (HCI) to help detect misfitting item response vectors for tests developed and analyzed based on a cognitive model. The HCI ranges from ?1.0 to 1.0, with values close to ?1.0 indicating that students respond unexpectedly or differently from the responses expected under a given cognitive model. A simulation study was conducted to evaluate the power of the HCI in detecting different types of misfitting item response vectors. Simulation results revealed that the detection rate of the HCI was a function of type of misfit, item discriminating power, and test length. The best detection rates were achieved when the HCI was applied to tests that consisted of a large number of highly discriminating items. In addition, whether a misfitting item response vector can be correctly identified depends, to a large degree, on the number of misfits of the item response vector relative to the cognitive model. When misfitting response behavior only affects a small number of item responses, the resulting item response vector will not be substantially different from the expectations under the cognitive model and consequently may not be statistically identified as misfitting. As an item response vector deviates further from the model expectations, misfits are more easily identified and consequently higher detection rates of the HCI are expected.     

The relationship between measures of vocabulary and narrative writing quality in second- and fourth-grade students

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between measures of written vocabulary and writing quality. Participants included 92 second-grade students and 101 fourth-grade students. Students completed two writing samples: one an experimenter-developed writing task and the other, a standardized assessment of writing quality. Research questions examined whether four vocabulary measures (vocabulary diversity, less frequent vocabulary, mean syllable length, number of polysyllabic words) demonstrated developmental differences, whether the vocabulary measures remained stable across two different writing prompts, and whether the vocabulary measures explained unique and shared variance beyond that explained by compositional length and compositional spelling. The results indicated that vocabulary diversity and less frequent vocabulary showed developmental differences across the two writing tasks. Vocabulary diversity was the only variable to remain stable across the two writing tasks. Commonality analysis revealed that vocabulary measures explained unique and shared variance in writing quality in all four models (2 grades and 2 writing prompts). Generally, vocabulary diversity was the most stable and consistent of the four vocabulary variables.     

Youth cultures,activism and agency: revisiting feminist debates

Following the invitation issued by the London Feminist Salon Collective in the pages of Gender and Education, this paper offers further theoretical suggestions for understanding agency. Based on an ethnographic study with young people engaged in activist politics, I offer a conception of agency that is at its core relational. I build this theoretical contribution upon a lineage of feminist theorising about the nature of agency, which began in debates about poststructuralism/postmodernism but have since moved to incorporate Pierre Bourdieu's cultural sociological approach. I suggest that while previous theorising has been enormously important for yielding insights into the possibilities for agency, it has not adequately accounted for the everyday means by which agency takes place. My empirical work highlights one of the modalities through which young people come to take political action – that is, through relational processes. I suggest that such an understanding about agency can further illuminate the means by which progressive and feminist goals might be reached.     

Preschool teachers' beliefs about children's print literacy development

Beliefs have often been considered important because of their relation to practice. Little is known about the literacy beliefs of preschool teachers, particularly their print literacy beliefs, even though young children's experiences with print have implications for formal schooling. Therefore, this study explored the print literacy beliefs of preschool teachers in a large multicultural area of central Canada. Interviews were conducted with eight preschool teachers based on a previous study in Australia. There were five themes that emerged from this research: uncertainty and variation in beliefs about how and when children learn to read and to write; isolation from other preschools and limited access to professional literacy knowledge; the importance of parent involvement in children's literacy development and the need to inform; increased literacy knowledge required; and variation in practices for fostering print literacy development. This study has important implications for preschool teaching as well as for educators of preschool teachers.