Monitoring trends and accuracy of self‐efficacy beliefs during interventions: Advantages and potential applications to school‐based settings

Self‐efficacy measures are context‐specific assessment tools designed to evaluate students' perceptions of capability to attain specific outcomes on particular tasks. These measures are important because they possess several desirable features typical of progress‐monitoring tools (i.e., context specific, free of reactive effects, strong psychometric properties), have been shown to be strong predictors of motivated and self‐regulatory behaviors, and possess many advantages relative to more global self‐report scales of motivation. In this article, a general framework for using these scales as a supplemental assessment tool to behavioral or skill‐based assessments will be presented and discussed. The key focus of this article involves illustrating how practitioners can evaluate and interpret the trends in students' self‐efficacy judgments as well as the accuracy of these judgments during the implementation and evaluation of academic interventions. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Student–teacher relationships matter: Moderating influences between temperament and preschool social competence

Ecological approaches to preschool assessment, which consider both within‐child and environmental variables, are considered best practice for school psychologists. This study employs such a model to investigate the interactive influence of child temperament and student–teacher relationship quality on peer play behaviors. Parents of 44 preschool children (25 girls, 19 boys) ranging in age from 40 to 68 months (mean [M] = 53.00) and primarily White (92.9%) provided ratings of their children's temperaments on the Behavioral Style Questionnaire. Their teachers completed the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale and the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale. Results indicate that (a) student–teacher relationships characterized by low conflict and low dependence are associated with less disruptive peer play, and (b) the association between temperament and disruptive play is attenuated in low conflict student–teacher relationships. Implications for school psychologists include the importance of student–teacher relationships in the context of preschool assessment and intervention planning. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

An empirical test of the validity of student evaluations of teaching made on RateMyProfessors.com

The present article examined the validity of public web‐based teaching evaluations by comparing the ratings on RateMyProfessors.com for 126 professors at Lander University to the institutionally administered student evaluations of teaching and actual average assigned GPAs for these same professors. Easiness website ratings were significantly positively correlated with actual assigned grades. Further, clarity and helpfulness website ratings were significantly positively correlated with student ratings of overall instructor excellence and overall course excellence on the institutionally administered IDEA forms. The results of this study offer preliminary support for the validity of the evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com.     

Children’s use of metacognition in solving everyday problems: An initial study from an Asian context

The aim of this study is to understand the relationship between metacognition and students’ everyday problem solving. Specifically, we were interested to find out whether regulation of cognition and knowledge of cognition are related to everyday problem solving and whether students who perform better in the decision-making problem will better differentiate the various components of metacognition. Two hundred and fifty-four fifth grade students completed a survey. We found evidence to suggest the existence of two major components of metacognition. Our results also suggest that at a higher level of decision-making, knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition were differentiated in their use by participants.     

Patent examiner specialization

We study the matching of patent applications to examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The distribution of technology classes is more concentrated than would occur under random matching and F-tests reject the hypothesis that family size and claim scope are randomly distributed across examiners. Using the application text, we show that examiner specialization persists even after conditioning on technology sub-classes. Specialization is less pronounced in computers and software than other technology fields. More specialized examiners have a lower grant rate. These findings undermine the idea that random matching justifies instrumental variables based on examiner behaviors or characteristics.     

Varieties of innovation and business survival: Does pursuit of incremental or far-ranging innovation make manufacturing establishments more resilient?

The transition from an industrial economy to an innovation economy poses two critical questions for the manufacturing sector in advanced countries. First, given the diffusion of modern manufacturing practices around the world, what level of innovation (incremental, more far-ranging, or radical) is most likely to support a resilient domestic manufacturing sector? Second, are assumed differences in the innovative capacity across space likely to hasten the decline of rural manufacturing? To answer these questions this research combines comprehensive measures of self-reported innovation able to reliably differentiate incremental and more far-ranging innovation with establishment-level data able to examine the geographical distribution of these different innovation strategies. The data used for the analysis includes a two-period panel of manufacturing establishments surveyed in 1996 and 2013 with annual employment data indicating survival in the intervening years. Our findings suggest that long-surviving manufacturing plants overwhelmingly gravitate away from non-innovation strategies toward incremental or more far-ranging innovation orientations. A survival advantage of far-ranging innovation over incremental innovation is observed for standalone firms. We do not identify a difference in the innovation orientations of rural and urban manufacturing establishments.     

Predictive ability of the medicine ball chest throw and vertical jump tests for determining muscular strength and power in adolescents

This study examined the predictive ability of the medicine ball chest throw and vertical jump for muscular strength and power in adolescents. One hundred and ninety adolescents participated in this study. Participants performed trials of the medicine ball chest throw and vertical jump, with vertical jump peak power calculated via an estimation equation. One-repetition maximum and peak power for the chest press and leg press were assessed using pneumatic exercise machines. The medicine ball chest throw strongly correlated with chest press one-repetition maximum and peak power, while the vertical jump peak power strongly correlated with leg press one-repetition maximum and peak power. The predictive ability of medicine ball chest throw was better than vertical jump peak power for muscular strength and power when controlling for sex, age, height, weight, and maturation, and was not affected by involvement in sports. Results show good predictive ability of the medicine ball chest throw for muscular strength and power in adolescents, while predictable ability of vertical jump peak power is weakened when other factors are taken into account.     

Lower extremity joint loads in habitual rearfoot and mid/forefoot strike runners with normal and shortened stride lengths

Our purpose was to compare joint loads between habitual rearfoot (hRF) and habitual mid/forefoot strikers (hFF), rearfoot (RFS) and mid/forefoot strike (FFS) patterns, and shorter stride lengths (SLs). Thirty-eight hRF and hFF ran at their normal SL, 5% and 10% shorter, as well as with the opposite foot strike. Three-dimensional ankle, knee, patellofemoral (PF) and hip contact forces were calculated. Nearly all contact forces decreased with a shorter SL (1.2–14.9% relative to preferred SL). In general, hRF had higher PF (hRF-RFS: 10.8 ± 1.4, hFF-FFS: 9.9 ± 2.0 BWs) and hip loads (axial hRF-RFS: ?9.9 ± 0.9, hFF-FFS: ?9.6 ± 1.0 BWs) than hFF. Many loads were similar between foot strike styles for the two groups, including axial and lateral hip, PF, posterior knee and shear ankle contact forces. Lateral knee and posterior hip contact forces were greater for RFS, and axial ankle and knee contact forces were greater for FFS. The tibia may be under greater loading with a FFS because of these greater axial forces. Summarising, a particular foot strike style does not universally decrease joint contact forces. However, shortening one’s SL 10% decreased nearly all lower extremity contact forces, so it may hold potential to decrease overuse injuries associated with excessive joint loads.