Construct validity of the resistance training skills battery in children aged 7-10 years

The current study sought to examine the construct validity of the Resistance Training Skills Battery for Children (RTSBc), a movement screen purported to assess resistance training skill in children. Children aged 7–10 years (n = 27, 21 males, 6 females) undertook measures of resistance training skill via the RTSBc, motor competence and muscular fitness. Using a median split for RTSBc scores, children were categorised as high or low resistance training competence. Univariate ANCOVAs, controlling for maturation, were used to examine whether measures of muscular fitness and motor competence scores differed as a function of RTSBc competence. Children who were classified as high for resistance training competence had significantly better motor competence (P = .001) and significantly faster 10 m sprint speed (P = .001). However, medicine ball throw and standing long jump scores as well as peak and average isokinetic muscle strength did not differ as a function of RTSBc (P > 0.05). In all cases maturation was significant as a covariate. This study is the first to demonstrate construct validity of the RTSBc as a measure of general motor competence and sprint speed, but not strength, in children aged 7–10 years.     

Baselines and Basics: some issues in the assessment of behavioural interventions in education

Abstract Teachers are increasingly making use of behavioural techniques in their everyday classroom practice. The need for empirical demonstration of effectiveness is integral to the behavioural approach and calls for the use of some sort of experimental design, both to show a relationship between the teacher's actions and change in the child's behaviour, and to discount alternative explanations of such change. The baseline, a measure of the behaviour to be changed, is seen as performing a key function in any such design. The advantages and disadvantages for applied research of group and single case experimental designs are examined. It is argued that the latter provide a particularly appropriate means for practising teachers to evaluate their own work. Five well‐established forms of single case design are discussed in detail and an actual example of each in use is given.     

Selling home: Corporate stadium names and the destruction of commemoration

A city's primary benefits from professional sports franchises are civic pride and identification with its teams. The stadium or arena, as the physical “memory place”; for teams, has historically been named to commemorate the relationship among the team, the city, and the fans. This paper chronicles the rise in corporate naming and argues that sacrificing the commemorative name of a sports venue for a paid corporate name alters the identity statements of memory places, abbreviates the narrative about a city and its teams, and threatens the idyllic illusions about sports that fans have long chosen to maintain. As corporate naming spreads beyond sports, the substitution of commercialization for commemoration presents a growing threat to public memory places of many kinds.