The Clinical Global Impressions (CGI) scale is a therapist-rated measure of client outcome that has been widely used within the research literature. The current study aimed to develop reliable and clinically significant change indices for the CGI, and to demonstrate its application in private psychological practice. Following the guidelines…

The study attempts to address the gap of exploring the possible antecedents of employees' commitment to change and its three dimensions. The role of context factors--participation in decision making, quality of communication, trust in management and history of change--are tested on overall commitment to change and also on its three…

The number of life events reported by study participants is sensitive to the method of data collection and time intervals under consideration. Individual characteristics also influence reporting; respondents with poor mental health report more life events. Much current research on life events is cross-sectional. Data from a longitudinal study of…

The Australian Professional Teaching Standards require pre-service teachers to complete a minimum number of days of professional experience in order to graduate. Problems can arise, however, when the evaluation of their professional experience against the Standards shifts from the providers of teacher education programmes to school-based…

This study investigated the use of text-message abbreviations (textisms) in Australian adolescents and young adults, and relations between textism use and literacy abilities. Fifty-two high school students aged 13-15 years, and 53 undergraduates aged 18-24 years, all users of predictive texting, translated conventional English sentences into…

An important aspect in studies concerning fundamental motor skills (FMS) proficiency is interrater objectivity (or interrater reliability), defined as the consistency or agreement in scores obtained from two or more raters. In a training setting, interrater objectivity is commonly determined as the relative number of times raters agree with an…

The need for appraising the effective integration of technologies into teaching and learning within a disciplinary context is crucial for upholding quality teaching standards in schools and formulating professional development programs. This paper describes the development and validation of an instrument aimed at characterising the integration of…

The purpose of this study was to verify within- and between-day repeatability and variability in children's oxygen uptake (VO[subscript 2]), gross economy (GE; VO[subscript 2] divided by speed) and heart rate (HR) during treadmill walking based on self-selected speed (SS). Fourteen children (10.1 plus or minus 1.4 years) undertook three testing…

Background: The quality of behaviour support plans (BSPs) can be an important influence on the quality of the support provided to people with disability who show challenging behaviours. The Behavior Support Plan Quality Evaluation Guide II (BSP-QE II) is one tool that may be useful in assessing the quality of behaviour support plans. It has…

In educational systems, concern has been expressed about the accuracy of classification when marks are aligned to grades or levels. In particular, it has been claimed that a school assessment-based grading would have much greater levels of accuracy than one based on examination scores. This paper investigates classification consistency by…

There is a strong quest in several countries including Australia for greater national consistency in education and intensifying interest in standards for reporting. Given this, it is important to make explicit the intended and unintended consequences of assessment reform strategies and the pressures to pervert and conform. In a policy context that…

Thin-ideal (or media) internalization is an important eating disorder risk factor that has become a central target of many prevention programs. However, evidence for its valid assessment in young, mixed-gender, adolescent samples is limited, and the current study is the first to explore the psychometric properties of the 30-item Sociocultural…

The provision and maintenance of quality teachers is a matter of priority for the profession. Moreover, teacher attrition is costly to the profession, to the community and to those teachers who leave feeling disillusioned. There is a need to investigate the experiences of early career teachers to consider how these issues contribute to decisions…

The Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) family of measures is routinely used in mental health services in the New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. However, the psychometric properties of the HoNOS65+ for elderly people have not been extensively evaluated. The aim of the present study was to examine the validity, reliability, and…

This article details an investigation into the onscreen marking (OSM) of Liberal Studies (LS) in Hong Kong--where paper-based marking (PBM) of public examinations is being phased out and wholly superseded by OSM. The study involved 14 markers who had previously rated Liberal Studies scripts on screen in the 2009 Hong Kong Advanced Level…