Assessing a Holistic Trait and Factor Approach to Career Development of College Students

To assess the impact of a holistic career and life planning course on college students, the authors asked 209 students in treatment and control groups to complete measures of career development. Results indicate that the course significantly increases vocational identity and career decision‐making self‐efficacy and decreases career indecision.     

Empowerment and relationships: A classroom model to enhance student motivation

This project focused on the goal of establishing a classroom model of motivation in which the source of student motivation is based on internal mechanisms or structures, along with the establishment of greater self-regulatory opportunities for students, and which results in greater student empowerment and motivation. One-hundred current elementary and secondary teachers and 100 university preservice teacher education students completed a 40-item Likert-type questionnaire that focused on four classroom dimensions of affirmation, rejection, student empowerment and teacher control. The results of this project suggested that, although veteran and preservice teachers agreed on the need for teacher control in the classroom, there was less agreement about their perceptions of the need to create a classroom environment of positive affirmation and student empowerment. Implications for future research and the need for creating an affirming, empowering, motivational classroom environment are discussed in light of the limitations for teachers and schools to encourage these constructs associated with recent federal legislative policies.     

Factorial Invariance of the Abbreviated Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale among Senior Women in the Nurses’ Health Study Cohort

The purpose of this study was to examine the factorial invariance of the Abbreviated Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale (NEWS-A) across subgroups based on demographic, health-related, behavioral, and environmental characteristics among Nurses’ Health Study participants (N = 2,919; age M = 73.0, SD = 6.9 years) living in California, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. A series of multigroup confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to evaluate increasingly restrictive hypotheses of factorial invariance. Factorial invariance was supported across age, walking limitations, and neighborhood walking. Only partial scalar invariance was supported across state residence and neighborhood population density. This evidence provides support for using the NEWS-A with older women of different ages, who have different degrees of walking limitations, and who engage in different amounts of neighborhood walking. Partial scalar invariance suggests that researchers should be cautious when using the NEWS-A to compare older adults living in different states and neighborhoods with different levels of population density.     

Policy intervention and power shifts: an evaluation of South Africa's education restructuring policies

This paper argues that the South African educational restructuring policy proposals are unlikely to become interventions that help bringing about greater development, equity, participation and redress. The reasons for this are manifold. It is contended that the policy proposals are flawed in their conceptualization of the problems and misjudge the educational context and dynamics on the ground. These interventions favour the interests of the more organized and privileged sections of society and only indirectly address the needs of the excluded and disadvantaged. The policy proposals are also based on problematic assumptions about policy and the policy process, and the relationship between policy and practice. Finally, these proposals do not have an appropriate understanding of the change process and are unable to develop strategies to influence the reform process and empower the disadvantaged to struggle for a fairer, more equitable and effective education and training system.     

Evaluation of a university course to promote physical activity: project GRAD

Project GRAD (Graduate Ready for Activity Daily) evaluates a university course to promote physical activity. In a randomized study, 338 university seniors participated in either an intervention or control course for academic credit, and posttest data were collected on 321. The control course was knowledge-oriented. The intervention course taught behavior change skills in weekly lectures and peer-led labs. Physical activity was assessed with 7-Day Physical Activity Recall interviews. The intervention had no significant effects on men. Among women, the intervention increased total physical activity during leisure, strengthening exercises, and flexibility exercise. This university course had the intended effects of promoting healthful patterns of physical activity among women, but no effects were observed on men, who were more active than women at baseline.     

Contextualizing the Interpretation of Reliability Data

What is the relationship between the context and substantive meaning of a measure and the assessment of the reliability of the measure? Does the interpretation of a reliability coefficient depend on the nature of the measure? How does this approach to reliability relate to alternative assessments?