Determinants of stable volunteering in Swiss soccer clubs

This study analysed the underlying determinants of soccer club volunteers’ tendency to continue or terminate their voluntary engagement. Stable voluntary engagement was analysed in terms of volunteers’ subjective expectations regarding club-related working conditions, expressed by level of job satisfaction and orientation of collective solidarity to their soccer club. These relationships were tested empirically using an online questionnaire with 345 volunteers in a selection of 20 Swiss soccer clubs. The results indicate that the volunteers’ job satisfaction and orientation toward collective solidarity correlated positively with their volunteering commitment. The discussion presents recommendations to help both Swiss soccer clubs as well as the Swiss Soccer Association to retain their volunteers more effectively.     

The Use of Pre-Hire Assessment Tools for Manufacturing Direct Labor

Attendant to the changing profile of the labor pool are shifts in norms and expectations that complicate worker recruitment, hiring, and retention. As labor pool, economic, and organizational characteristics change, two issues emerge: first, the growing need to efficiently coordinate available workers with the work that needs to be done, and second, strategies for organizations to use need to be developed. Leontiefs Input/Output Theory has been used to illustrate issues related to coordination of labor, and two pre-employment tests have been studied to determine the effectiveness of pre-employment testing strategies. Pre-employment test scores obtained in an expanding contract electronics manufacturing firm have been analyzed to determine the relationships that may exist between test scores and employee success. Success has been defined as performance and retention. Multiple regression and discriminant analyses revealed several statistically significant results, including a relationship between Working Safety-test scores and performance, and Job Candidate Profile scores and retention. While interesting in and of themselves, the results further suggest that variables exist, other than those studied, that arc important to the selection of successful employees.     

Creating home–school partnerships: examining urban and suburban teachers’ practices,challenges, and educational needs

This study examines suburban and urban teachers’ family involvement practices, challenges they face in involving families, and their educational needs. A questionnaire was administered to 89 teachers. Data were coded using a constant comparative analysis. Codes were analyzed to determine the number of teachers whose responses fell into each category and by comparing suburban and urban teachers’ responses. Results of this study suggest that although urban and suburban teachers share some similarities in terms of their practices, challenges, and needs, a number of differences were evident. Overall, suburban teachers’ responses were more detailed and included specific strategies. We also found that urban teachers’ interests in further education did not necessarily align with the areas in which they reported challenges.     

Improved Estimation of Maximal Reliability for Unidimensional Multicomponent Measuring Instruments in Repeated Measure Studies

In repeated measure studies with unidimensional scales, measurement invariance, and specificity stability over time, the specificity variance in each instrument component can be identified. This article describes for that setting an improved point and interval estimation procedure for the maximal reliability coefficient associated with a given set of homogeneous measures. The method is developed within the framework of latent variable modeling and can also be readily used in longitudinal studies for improved point and interval estimation of individual measure reliability and scale reliability at each assessment occasion. The procedure is based on empirically testable conditions and is illustrated with an example.     

Recommendations for exploring the disfluency hypothesis for establishing whether perceptually degrading materials impacts performance

The target articles explore a common hypothesis pertaining to whether perceptually degrading materials will improve reasoning, memory, and metamemory. Outcomes are mixed, yet some evidence was garnered in support of a version of the disfluency hypothesis that includes moderators, and along with evidence from prior research, researchers will likely continue to explore the impact of disfluency on reasoning and learning. Toward this end, evidence and discussion from the target articles also suggest recommendations – both explicitly and implicitly – about how to explore this effect: (a) treat disfluency as a hypothesis to be tested and evaluate the disfluency hypothesis against alternatives; (b) pursue multiple replications of any disfluency effects; (c) attempt to measure differences in processing fluency across conditions; and (d) resist labeling manipulated variables with theoretically-laden terms. We expand on these recommendations in the present commentary.     

Investigation of reinforcement of the modified carbon black from wasted tires by nuclear magnetic resonance

INTRODUCTION Waste tires cannot degrade in the short term; they may cause accidental fire and emit poisonous gases rich in dioxins. How to recycle and utilize them effectively, and prevent secondary pollution to the environment has become a new issue that the reuse of resources is faced with. Pyrolysis is an environ-ment-friendly process for recycling of used tires. Three products are typically obtained from the pyrolysis of waste tires: gas, oil and char (Gonzalez etal., 2001). Pyrolyt…     

Developing conceptual understanding in ray optics via learning with multiple representations

A particular difficulty in physics learning is the fact that pupils’ “intuitive” concepts are often resistant to instruction. This article reports empirical results from two related studies within an interdisciplinary project of physics education and educational psychology in ray optics. Two different kinds of treatment groups (TG A and TG B), both targeted at widespread pupils’ intuitive concepts (N?=?511), were compared with the results of a control group (CG C) learning with conventional tasks (N?=?218) provided by a related study II. Pupils in TG A) of study I worked on cognitively activating tasks related to widespread intuitive concepts in ray optics explicitly requiring them to deal with multiple representations. Pupils in the TG B) of study I worked on the same intuitive concepts, but without the cognitively activating representational component. TG A) and B) were compared with each other and with CG C) learning with conventional tasks. The results indicated that tasks addressing widespread intuitive pupils’ concepts improved conceptual understanding significantly more than conventional tasks. There was evidence of a significant intermediate effect showing medium-term stability.