Assessing mentoring in organizations: an evaluation of commercial mentoring instruments

The purpose of this article is to inform readers about the types of instruments available for assessing and improving mentoring in organizations. Extensive review of the psychological, business and medical literature was conducted to identify commercially published, practitioner‐oriented instruments. All of the instruments that were identified – including the Alleman mentoring activities questionnaire, Mentoring in the moment, Mentoring skills assessment, and Principles of adult mentoring scale – are evaluated herein. Each instrument’s target audience, raters, subscales, response options, psychometric properties, and relative strengths and weaknesses are described. Although these instruments are reported to be used extensively, evidence of their validity is not always available. This review presents information that, in combination with first‐hand inspection of the instruments, should enable practitioners to differentiate between instruments that may be a fit for their needs from those that are not. Furthermore, it may introduce academic readers to instruments that are not covered in the scholarly literature in spite of their common use for non‐research purposes.     

From in-service teacher development to school improvement: factors of learning transfer in teacher education

In-service teacher development programs are perceived as a common way to foster school improvement. Nevertheless, program evaluation to date ends with the assessment of acquired knowledge, skills, and motivation, frequently disregarding the actual learning transfer and its conditions. This study aimed to investigate how individual and situational factors interact and contribute to learning transfer in an in-service teacher development program. We tested a transfer model derived from human resources development research. One hundred and twenty-nine teachers aged 25–62 years (87% female), participating in an in-service development program, were surveyed three times during the program. Results of path analyses suggest that not only especially individual factors are critical for learning transfer in the context of school improvement, but also that program and environmental factors have important effects. They moderated the effects of the individual factors.     

Ontology refinement for improved information retrieval

Ontologies are frequently used in information retrieval being their main applications the expansion of queries, semantic indexing of documents and the organization of search results. Ontologies provide lexical items, allow conceptual normalization and provide different types of relations. However, the optimization of an ontology to perform information retrieval tasks is still unclear. In this paper, we use an ontology query model to analyze the usefulness of ontologies in effectively performing document searches. Moreover, we propose an algorithm to refine ontologies for information retrieval tasks with preliminary positive results.     

Knowledge sharing in open source software project teams: A transactive memory system perspective

The extant studies have not empirically examined the possible team cognitive mechanisms that facilitate knowledge sharing in OSS teams, even though knowledge sharing is a cognitive task and an OSS team is a complex cognitive system. To fill this research gap, we adopt the perspective of transactive memory system (TMS) to explore the relationships among TMS, knowledge sharing, communication quality, and technical achievement of OSS teams. By analyzing data from 95 OSS projects with the partial least squares (PLS) method, our study demonstrates that several TMS dimensions have positive impacts on knowledge sharing behaviors and communication quality. Moreover, communication quality positively influences technical achievement of OSS teams. These findings provide useful implications for literature and practice.     

Cognitive Interviewing: A Qualitative Tool for Improving Questionnaires in Sport Science

This study sought to determine whether body fat percentage estimates using an inexpensive bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) device (Tanita TBF-521, Tanita Corp, of America, Arlington Heights, IL) could be freely substituted for those obtained utilizing skinfolds (method equivalence). Data were analyzed from measurements on 38 children age 6 to 12 years. Random effect intraclass correlation (r = .930; 95% confidence interval [CI] = .87 to .96), fixed effect intraclass correlation (r = .932; 95% CI = .87 to .96), and least-products regression supported the equivalence of the 2 methods. The technical error between the 2 methods (3.7; coefficient of variation = 12.2%) was small and also supported the equivalence of the two methods. The ability of the BIA device to categorize into normal and obese categories when compared to the skinfold technique was also impressive (κ = .95; 95% CI = .73 to .99). However, the results of the limits of agreement analysis showed that the approximate 95% CI for the differences between methods was wide (-9.1 to 11.4).     

Communications For Developing Nations

Charlotte Dietrich, Der Rundfunk in Afrika An fang der Siebziger Jahre: Strukturen and Daten (Broadcasting in Africa in the Early Seventies: Structures and Data) (Department of Mass Communication, University of Salzburg, Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria---$5.00, paper, plus cost of shipping)

Communication Policy and Planning for Development: A Selected Annotated Bibliography by Syed A. Rahim (285 pp., October 1976, price not given, paper)

An Overview of Communication Research in Asia: Status, Problems and Needs by Gloria D. Feliciano (20 pp., June 1973, on request, paper)

Mass Media Use and the “Revolution of Rising Frustrations:” A Reconsideration of the Theory by Robert C. Hornik (27 pp., July 1974, on request, paper)

Communication and Development in China (Communication Monograph No. 1), by Godwin Chu, et al. (116 pp., September 1976, price not given, paper)

Communication in the Pacific, edited by Daniel Lerner and Jim Richstad (96 pp., June 1976, price not given paper)

The Use of Radio in Adult Literacy Education, by Richard C. Burke (116 pp., £1.50 or about $2.40, paper)

Programmed Instruction for Literacy Workers, by Sivasailam Thiagarajan (136 pp., £1.95 or about $3.12, paper)

Mass Communication in Malaysia, compiled by Lim Huck Tee and V.V. Sarachandran (91 pp., 1975, 12 Singapore dollars outside Asia)

Mass Communication in India, compiled at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (216 pp., 1976, 18 Singapore dollars outside Asia)