WHAT RESPONDENTS LEARN FROM SCALES: THE INFORMATIVE FUNCTIONS OF RESPONSE ALTERNATIVES

Survey respondents are often asked to report the frequency withwhich they engage in a certain behavior by checking the appropriatealternative from a list of response categories provided to them.A psychological research program, reviewed in the present paper,indicates that response alternatives are not only measurementdevices but constitute a source of information for the respondent.Specifically, respondents assume that the average or typicalbehavior is reflected by values stated in the middle range ofthe response alternatives and that the extremes of the listreflect the extremes of the distribution. This assumption affectstheir own responses in various ways. First, respondents usethe range of the response alternatives as a frame of referencein estimating their own behavioral frequencies and report higherfrequencies on scales that present high rather than low frequencyresponse alternatives. Second, respondents extract comparisoninformation from their own location on the response scale anduse this information in making comparative judgments. Finally,if the target behavior is open to interpretation, as is oftenthe case when subjective experiences are assessed, respondentsuse the response alternatives to determine the exact referenceof the question. Accordingly, the same question in combinationwith different response alternatives is likely to assess differentexperiences. Implications for questionnaire construction arediscussed.     

Generierte DB-Aufrufschnittstellen – Anwendungsspezifische Zugriffsoptimierung durch Bindungsflexibilit?t

Jede Datenbankprogrammierschnittstelle mu? sich daran messen lassen, inwieweit sie die Vorteile der durch sie integrierten Sprachen (Datenbank- und Programmiersprache) erh?lt. Neben dieser allgemeinen Zielsetzung müssen heutzutage neuere Konzepte in den Bereichen Programmiersprachen und Datenbanksysteme sowie die Anforderungen komplexer Anwendungsbereiche (z. B. CAD oder Software-Entwicklung) beachtet werden. Unser Ansatz der generierten Aufrufschnittstellen soll dazu beitragen, Datenmodelle objekt- relationaler Datenbanksysteme und Typsysteme objektorientierter Programmiersprachen n?her zusammenzurücken. Er erlaubt neben der Schnittstellengenerierung ihre anwendungsspezifische Konfigurierung, um die DB-Verarbeitung spezieller Anwendungen gezielt optimieren zu k?nnen. Wir werden neben Aspekten der Generierung/Konfigurierung die Nutzung von generierten Aufrufschnittstellen beschreiben und Experimente vorstellen, die den durch diesen Ansatz erzielbaren Leistungsgewinn verdeutlichen. Letzterer kann durch gezielten, auf die jeweilige Anwendung zugeschnittenen Einsatz von frühen Bindungen für Datenmanipulationsoperationen sowie von Pointer-Swizzling-/Prefetching-Mechanismen erreicht werden.     

Stimulators and barriers towards social innovations in public libraries: Qualitative research study

Public libraries have a huge potential to be creators and facilitators of social innovation in communities and society. Qualitative research based on interviews with 27 librarians showed that social innovation in libraries can take the form of educational and cultural activities, leisure and networking activities and social support services. The main goal of the research was to find out what factors support and make these innovations difficult in public libraries. A four-layer model of barriers and stimulators for social innovation is presented, which includes structural, local, organizational and personnel levels. The model could serve to inform librarians, their stakeholders and governments about all levels of barriers and stimulators connected to innovation of library services and social re-positioning of public libraries in the future.     

Complexity leadership in learning analytics: Drivers,challenges and opportunities

Learning analytics (LA) has demonstrated great potential in improving teaching quality, learning experience and administrative efficiency. However, the adoption of LA in higher education is often beset by challenges in areas such as resources, stakeholder buy-in, ethics and privacy. Addressing these challenges in a complex system requires agile leadership that is responsive to pressures in the environment and capable of managing conflicts. This paper examines LA adoption processes among 21 UK higher education institutions using complexity leadership theory as a framework. The data were collected from 23 interviews with institutional leaders and subsequently analysed using a thematic coding scheme. The results showed a number of prominent challenges associated with LA deployment, which lie in the inherent tensions between innovation and operation. These challenges require a new form of leadership to create and nurture an adaptive space in which innovations are supported and ultimately transformed into the mainstream operation of an institution. This paper argues that a complexity leadership model enables higher education to shift towards more fluid and dynamic approaches for LA adoption, thus ensuring its scalability and sustainability.     

Identification of discipline violations and its role in planning corrective and preventive discipline in school

Many surveys confirm a substantial number of discipline problems in schools, but not many surveys are aimed at their identification. Identification of discipline violations is indispensable for prudent planning of their interventions in and prevention of their occurrence. Earlier studies focused mostly on the teachers’ perceptions of discipline problems and they were not interested in how discipline problems are perceived by students. In this study, teachers and students identified the most frequent and disturbing discipline violations. Given the results of the survey, it would be necessary to pay more attention to preventing disruption of lessons and improper attitude, which are, in the views of teachers and students alike, the most frequent and disturbing violations.     

Ethnic,Familial, and Religious Identity of Roma Adolescents in Bulgaria,Czech Republic,Kosovo, and Romania in Relation to Their Level of Well‐Being

This study examines ethnic, national, familial, and religious identity and well‐being of 632 Roma minority and 589 majority adolescents (age: M = 15.98 years, SD = 1.34) in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, and Romania. Results indicated that Roma showed lower endorsement of national identity but stronger religious identity than their majority counterparts. Path models showed positive associations of familial and religious identities with well‐being, whereas Roma identity was negatively associated with well‐being, particularly for Roma in Bulgaria and Kosovo (countries with a less active policy toward improving conditions of Roma). In the latter countries, Roma ethnic identity is less relevant and weakly associated with psychological well‐being of youth.     

Development of Math Attitudes and Math Self-Concepts: Gender Differences,Implicit–Explicit Dissociations,and Relations to Math Achievement

Three hundred and ninety-one children (195 girls; M_age = 9.56 years) attending Grades 1 and 5 completed implicit and explicit measures of math attitudes and math self-concepts. Math grades were obtained. Multilevel analyses showed that first-grade girls held a strong negative implicit attitude about math, despite no gender differences in math grades or self-reported (explicit) positivity about math. The explicit measures significantly predicted math grades, and implicit attitudes accounted for additional variance in boys. The contrast between the implicit (negativity for girls) and explicit (positivity for girls and boys) effects suggest implicit–explicit dissociations in children, which have also been observed in adults. Early-emerging implicit attitudes may be a foundation for the later development of explicit attitudes and beliefs about math.     

All good readers are the same,but every low-skilled reader is different: an eye-tracking study using PISA data

PISA results show that a considerable number of 15-year-old pupils after 8 to 10 years of schooling have a low level of functional reading literacy, as defined in the PISA framework. While PISA results help identify the level of reading competency, they do not reveal what might be the reasons why some students fail to solve the tasks. One way to explore the difficulties students encounter while solving PISA reading tasks is to track their eye movements during reading. The main aim of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in eye movement patterns between students with high and low scores on PISA reading tasks. A sample of 92 students took part in the pre-test, which was based on PISA items, and administered to identify groups of students with high and low PISA reading scores. Based on student pre-test results, 20 students were selected for the main, eye-tracking test—10 participants with low scores and 10 with high scores. The eye-tracking test consisted of four different released PISA reading tasks, three of them continuous and one non-continuous. The continuous items were followed by one multiple-choice question each at L1, L2, and L3 levels of difficulty. The non-continuous text was followed by three multiple-choice questions (also L1–L3).Three main findings were the following: regarding saccadic amplitudes, the reading was found to be less fluent for the low-skilled group; according to the heat maps, they had difficulty finding the relevant material; and taking into account standard deviations of eye-tracking measures, the variability was found to be larger in this group. Taken together, the findings of this study show that the PISA results differentiating low- and high-scoring groups go hand in hand with insights from more fine-grained eye-tracking measurements.