This study aimed at examining the suitability of questionnaire instruments commonly used in large-scale assessments for measuring non-cognitive school effectiveness criteria. It focused on questions of reliability and validity for capturing changes in students within schools across time and the instruments' sensitivity to school effects. The aim…

A variety of studies have shown that social and academic integration are important indicators of future student success and satisfaction. They are therefore an important field of action for higher education development programmes. However, specifications of the theoretical models and empirical representations vary widely between researchers and…

In social research, the use of agree/disagree (A/D) questions is a popular method for measuring attitudes. Research has shown that A/D questions require complex cognitive processing and are susceptible to response bias. Thus, some researchers recommend the use of item-specific (IS) questions. This study examines the processing of A/D and IS…

The present study sought to examine the psychometric properties of the French and German versions of the Physical Self-Concept Questionnaire for Elementary School Children-Revised (PSCQ-C-R). A sample of 519 children participated in this study. Of those, 197 were French-Canadian and 322 were German. Results support the factor validity and…

Research Findings: A successful transition from preschool to elementary school requires a high level of behavioral adaptation. The aim of our study was to analyze child-related factors in preschool that facilitate a positive behavioral adaptation in the transitional period to elementary school. A cluster analysis was conducted with the data from…

The effect of the response scale direction on response behavior is a well-known phenomenon in survey research. While there are several approaches to explaining how such response order effects occur, the literature reports mixed evidence. Furthermore, different question formats seem to vary in their susceptibility to these effects. We therefore…

Participation in web surveys via smartphones increased continuously in recent years. The reasons for this increase are a growing proportion of smartphone owners and an increase in mobile Internet access. However, research has shown that smartphone respondents are frequently distracted and/or multitasking, which might affect completion and response…

Background: European countries, and especially Germany, are currently very much affected by human migration flows, with the result that the task of integration has become a challenge. Only very little empirical evidence on topics such as labor market participation and processes of social integration of migrant subpopulations is available to date…

Every individual is characterized by a learning style which an individual develops over a course of time. The learning style may be shaped by different cultural environment. This study aims to find and compare the learning style of Indian and German business students by examining the learning styles of 81 students from India and Germany. The study…

Recent research on attitudes towards inclusion uses almost exclusively explicit measures such as questionnaires. Unfortunately, explicit attitude measures are biased by social desirability, particularly when the attitude object is 'sensible', as with inclusive education. Implicit attitude measures are less prone to social desirability, but…

Students' causal attributions play an important role in recent studies due to their effects on academic self-concept and performances. Most common causal attributions are students' ability, effort, task difficulty, and chance. The present study aims at identifying students' preferred causal attributions of failure and success while experimenting.…

The constructive alignment (CA) of university teaching has received considerable attention from a policy-making perspective, but much less so from a student perspective. Against this background, we explored the relationships between CA and student motivation, and between CA and perceived learning demands. Fifty-six students from two second-year…

In this study, we present the newly developed "Misconceptions about Multimedia Learning Questionnaire" (MMLQ), we evaluate its psychometric properties (item difficulties, scale reliabilities, and internal structure), and we use it to examine the prevalence of four different misconceptions about multimedia learning in student teachers and…

Based on Boekaerts' dual-processing self-regulation model, our study seeks to examine to what extent narrow personality traits are associated with different aspects of self-regulated learning. We approach this research question by examining the relationships of the narrow personality traits mindfulness, contingent self-esteem (domain academic…

Researchers attempting to survey refugees over time face methodological issues because of the transient nature of the target population. In this article, we examine whether applying smartphone technology could alleviate these issues. We interviewed 529 refugees and afterward invited them to four follow-up mobile web surveys and to install a…