Multidimensional Scaling Analysis of Growth and Change

Latent growth curve modeling provides a powerful and flexible tool for researchers to study individual differences in change as well as the correlates and predictors of change. Recent developments in estimation and hypothesis testing procedures are largely based on confirmatory structural equation approaches. In this article, an alternative exploratory approach is proposed for the analysis of growth and change using multidimensional scaling (MDS). When applied to growth data, it is a growth pattern recognition technique that partitions individual differences into initial level and growth pattern components. When applied to other longitudinal data, it can be used to study change patterns. A math achievement data set is used to illustrate the growth modeling method and a mood variable is used to illustrate change modeling. The strengths and limitations of the MDS growth profile analysis are discussed.     

Improving the Predictive Validity of Reading Comprehension Using Response Times of Correct Item Responses

Response times have often been used as ancillary information to improve parameter estimation. Under the dual processing theory, assuming reading comprehension requires an automatic process, a fast, correct response is an indicator of effective automatic processing. A skilled, automatic comprehender should be high in response accuracy and low in response times. Following this argument, several questions were addressed in this study. First, individuals with higher ability endorsed a correct response more quickly in the reading comprehension assessment, suggesting correct response times provide useful information in discriminating individuals of different abilities. Second, in terms of predicting an external criterion of reading proficiency, the increment of predictive validity of categorized correct response times was larger than the incremental validity of continuous response times based on both correct and incorrect response times. An index reflecting both accuracy and response time yielded higher incremental validity than indices reflecting response time only. Results support response time as manifesting a dimension of interest in its own right, over its inclusion as an ancillary dimension in a multidimensional model.     

Environmental Education Research in the Classroom: a shared methodological reflection by the teacher and the researcher

This article constitutes an attempt by a teacher and a researcher to jointly present their dual perspectives on the experience of a pilot phase of school‐based research. The discussion focuses upon the methodological difficulties that we each experienced both before, and during, the period of the research. In light of these, the article discusses concrete ways in which the methodology of the broader study could be improved, and considers the deeper issues relating to teacher‐researcher interaction which have emerged through this shared methodological reflection. We see this article as contributing to the growth of collaborative writing by researchers and research participants, and furthering the ongoing methodological dialogue within environmental education research.     

Students as Partial Employees: A Metaphor for the Student-Institution Interaction

We propose a new metaphor for describing the interaction between students and their institutions of higher education, students as partial employees. Several current metaphors anchored in the quality movement are reviewed to provide a background for this new way of viewing today's college students. This article provides the readers with examples of the metaphor in use and describes why the partial employee transcends the academic and administrative structures of higher education.     

Cognition and creativity

Cognitive research on creativity is both traditional and innovative. It is traditional in the sense that many of the well-recognized processes, structures, and stores from mainstream cognitive psychology have been used to understand creative thinking. It is innovative because there is a need to understand processes which are not recognized unless one is specifically interested in creativity. Some of these are inherently subjective, a fact which is often disregarded by those hoping for a traditionally scientific analysis. Still, much of the interest in the cognitive sciences concerns how new constructs come into being; and anyone interested in that is in fact thinking about creativity. That is creativity. This article reviews several traditional cognitive topics, including knowledge, memory, classification, judgment, and categorization, and describes how each can influence creative thinking. It also presents an original model of creative thinking with problem finding, ideation, and judgmental processes as primary components, and knowledge and motivation as secondary (contributing but not controlling) components. Several issues are covered, including the relegation of motivation, the distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge, and the potential for knowledge to both facilitate and inhibit creative ideation.     

Dynamic prediction characteristics of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory

OBJECTIVES: Risk measures are commonly used to evaluate outcomes in child abuse prevention and intervention programs. This study examined whether pre-intervention to post-intervention changes on the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP) Abuse Scale corresponded to actual changes in risk for future reports of maltreatment and evaluated the validity of several algorithms for classifying clinically significant change. METHOD: Participants in the study were 459 parents participating in any one of 27 community-based family preservation and family support programs. Most parents were low-income mothers with a variety of social risk indicators, about a third of whom would be classified as high-risk by the CAP Abuse Scale. Participants were administered the CAP at program enrollment, then at completion of the intervention (median time=150 days), then followed for an average of approximately 2 years for future official maltreatment reports. Dynamic predictive validity of the CAP Abuse Scale was modeled by comparing survival models using a time-dependent structure of pre- and post-intervention scores to identically structured models using only a pre-intervention score. RESULTS: Pre-intervention CAP Abuse Scale scores demonstrated incremental future predictive validity. However, score changes failed to correspond to changes in likelihood of future abuse. Models using pre-intervention scores only were more predictive than time-dependent score models, and pre-intervention scores were better predictors than post-intervention scores of post-intervention CPS referrals. Common algorithms for classifying clinically significant change yielded results that could be counter-intuitive and misleading. For example, participants classified as improved on these algorithms were actually at similar or even higher risk than those classified as unchanged or worse. CONCLUSIONS: The results strongly supported the static predictive validity of the CAP and the use of the CAP for screening purposes. The results did not support the dynamic predictive validity of the CAP. Results of exploratory analyses suggested the possibility that the changes observed on the CAP Abuse Scale reflected changes in subscales assessing subjective distress or parenting attitudes, which may be markers for initial risk but when changed, do not necessarily translate into actual changes in future maltreatment behavior. Although replication and extension are needed before drawing firm conclusions, the current study raises questions about the common practice of using risk instruments as proxy measures for child maltreatment risk in intervention and prevention programs.     

Deaf children's use of beliefs and desires in negotiation

Although several studies have shown that deaf children demonstrated impaired performances on false-belief tasks, the children's belief understanding appeared intact when asked to explain emotions or behavior. However, this finding does not necessarily indicate a full-fledged theory of mind. This study aimed to investigate deaf children's negotiation strategies in false-belief situations, because situations that require negotiation provide a natural context with a clear motivational aspect, which might appeal more strongly to deaf children's false-belief reasoning capacities. The purpose of this study was to compare the reactions of 11- to 12-year-old deaf and hearing children to scenarios in which a mother, who is unaware of a change in the situation, threatens to block the fulfillment of the child's desire. The results showed that deaf children more often failed to correct the mother's false beliefs. In contrast with hearing children, who frequently left their own desires implicit, deaf children kept stressing their desires as a primary argument, even though the mother could be expected to be fully aware of these desires. Moral claims were used to the same extent by both groups. In general, deaf children more often used arguments that did not provide new information for their conversation partners, including repetitions of the same argument. The results were interpreted in terms of the special needs that are required by the hampered communication between deaf and hearing people as well as in terms of the ongoing discussion regarding theory-of-mind development in deaf children.     

What Should Criminal Justice Interns Know? Comparing the Opinions of Student Interns and Criminal Justice Practitioners

We surveyed 118 criminal justice interns, asking them to assess the importance of various practical skills, professional skills, academic content knowledge, and knowledge of various current issues. We compared the results with those of 202 criminal justice practitioners. Student interns viewed almost every skill and knowledge area as important. Practitioners placed the greatest value on verbal communication skills, good work ethic, good work habits, and initiative. Regarding content knowledge, practitioners assigned the greatest importance to applied ethics. Racial issues as they apply to criminal justice and gender issues were viewed as most important in the current issues category. We examined the differences according to race, gender, and type of agency. We found significant differences between interns and practitioners in terms of the skills and knowledge deemed important, and significant differences between agency types. Significant differences existed based on racial and ethnic identity; differences based on gender were not significant.     

Socialization and Family Correlates of Mental Health Outcomes among Hispanic and Anglo American Children: Consideration of Cross-Ethnic Scalar Equivalence

Recently there has been concern over the need for developmental research within ethnic minority populations and interest in socialization and family variables within, and variability across, ethnic groups. This study reports analyses designed to: compare several socialization, family, and mental health variables among Hispanic and Anglo American 8–14-year-old children and mothers; examine the regression equations predicting mental health indicators with the socialization and family variables; and evaluate the cross-ethnic scalar equivalence of these socialization and family measures. The findings indicate that there are ethnic differences in several socialization and family variables; several of the socialization and family variables are related to the mental health variables, and these relations are very similar across ethnic groups; and the socialization and family measures appear to have sufficient cross-ethnic scalar equivalence for English-speaking, largely Mexican American Hispanic samples. Further, these findings suggest some caution regarding the use of the Child Depression Inventory in Hispanic samples.