Relationship Understanding Between Emotional Stability,Self-Disclosure and Social Adjustment

This paper discusses a survey, carried out by the authors, of 211 employees’ employed in public and private manufacturing organizations in North India to determine if emotional stability acts as a mediator between self-disclosure and social adjustment. Capitalization theory has been used as theoretical framework to examine the proposed relationships. Results indicate that high self-disclosure has positive association with social adjustment. Results also suggest that emotional stability partially mediates self-disclosure and social adjustment relationship. Implications for future research include further examination through additional mediators and other dimensions of self-disclosure from capitalization theory in understudied non-U.S. cultures like India.     

Emotions’ management within the Real Madrid football club business model

Recent changes in the sports industry – derived from increasing financial pressures – have led to the update of existing business models. Particularly in football, the dominant clubs develop new business models based on the spectators’ commitment to the sport. Packed stadiums attract more people who consume both the matches and the many other associated goods and services. In an experience economy, the lever is the tapping of their emotions by an increasingly sophisticated value proposal. Groups of passionate supporters lead the way to the establishment of communities with a common interest in the club. Following a qualitative methodology (interviews and other texts’ analysis) our study of the Real Madrid Football Club (RM) business model suggests that one of the biggest football clubs in the world is creating a business model based on the emotions of its supporters. This finding could be useful for other clubs in many different countries.     

Psychometric evaluation of the exercise identity scale among Greek adults and cross-cultural validity

The present study reported on translating the Exercise Identity Scale (EIS: Anderson & Cychosz, 1994) into Greek and examining its psychometric properties and cross-cultural validity based on U.S. individuals' EIS responses. Using four samples comprising 33, 103, and 647 Greek individuals, including exercisers and nonexercisers, and a similar sample comprising 800 U.S. individuals, the concurrent validity, factor structure, internal reliability, test-retest reliability, external validity, gender invariance, and cross-cultural validity of the EIS responses were examined using confirmatory factor analytical procedures. The results supported the concurrent validity, an adequate unidimensional factor structure for the translated EIS and the internal reliability and test-retest reliability over a 6-week interval. Further, cross-gender configural, partial metric, partial strong factorial, and partial strict factorial invariance and cross-cultural configural and partial metric invariance supported the cross-cultural equivalence of the EIS versions. Moreover, the external validity of the translated EIS responses was also supported. Overall, the findings supported the validity of the exercise identity construct outside North American boundaries and the EIS items' equivalence, providing initial evidence for its cross-cultural applicability.     

Multiculturalism: An "as if" phenomenon

Multiculturalism has come to have multiple meanings depending on the context and voice it is given. In higher education it has become a symbol for particular notions about minority and majority groups, and their places in the institution. While multicultural affairs and concerns at academic institutions appear to be genuinely supported and give the impression of commitment, they are, on closer inspection, a superficial and reactionary response to environmental pressures. Multicultural initiatives are not integrated into the very heart of the institution, but, rather, relegated to a cursory importance that, while genuinely intended, maintains the status quo. This paper attempts to closely examine the process of multiculturalism in small liberal arts colleges from the perspective of a minority faculty and administrator. That is, from a simultaneous position of subject and object.     

What Is Right About Special Education

Abstract

Promoting self-determination has become an important aspect of the educational programs of students with disabilities. There is now a sufficient literature base to support some syntheses that enable researchers to judge their progress in this area to date and to provide direction for future research and practice. For this study, we conducted a literature review of studies that measured or examined global self-determination.     

Evaluating students' science notebooks as an assessment tool

The idea of using science notebooks as a classroom assessment tool is not new. There is general agreement that science notebooks allow teachers to assess students' conceptual and procedural understanding and to provide the feedback students need for improving their performance. In this study we examined the use of science notebooks as an unobtrusive assessment tool that can also be used by individuals outside the classroom (for example, school district personnel), and as a means for obtaining information about students' learning and their opportunities to learn. More specifically, in this study students' science notebooks were used as a source of data about the (a) implementation of a curriculum's intended activities, (b) students' performance, and (c) quality of teachers' feedback. Our results indicated that: (1) Students' science notebooks can be reliably scored. Unit implementation, student performance, and teacher feedback scores were highly consistent across raters and units. (2) High and positive correlations with other performance assessment scores indicated that the student performance score can be considered as an achievement indicator. And (3) low performance scores across the two units revealed that students' communication skills and understanding were far away from the maximum score and did not improve over the course of instruction during the school year. This result may be due, in part, to the fact that no teacher feedback was found in any of the students' notebooks across the six classrooms studied. This may reflect some characteristics of the teachers' assessment practices that may require further professional development.     

A general model of performance and quality for one-stop e-Government service offerings

This paper introduces a framework and methodology for establishing indicators and metrics in order to assess the quality and performance of one-stop e-Government service offerings. The set of quality and performance indicators and metrics proposed has been derived in an outcomes assessment approach, based on the perspectives of e-Government service providers and end-users and following a goal-question-metric line of work that departs from some key quality and performance benefits. A methodology that employs the proposed framework to set improvement targets according to alternative scenarios is presented, and a strategy is elaborated for analyzing root causes of potential quality and performance shortcomings and undertaking appropriate countermeasures. Some results of application in a real case study, in the context of an EU-funded R&D project, are also provided. Finally, recommendations are given about usefulness of the proposed approach for e-Government service providers, as well as policy and decision-makers, and directions of future work are discussed in order to enhance the conceptual coverage of this approach, while at the same time not compromising its simplicity of application and generality of purpose.