Objective: Understanding how children cope is an important factor in investigating the impact of adversity on child development. With children increasingly experiencing adverse situations -- such as the COVID-19 pandemic -- having methods of assessing coping strategies is an essential step in supporting self-regulation development. Parent report…

This study examined the extent to which relations between students' perceptions of the learning environment, academic achievement, and study approaches measured by both self-reported and process data were consistent amongst 323 engineering students in a flipped classroom course. A hierarchical cluster analysis on four self-reported scales…

This cross-sectional study of 504 community-dwelling Australian adults (328 females, 176 males, mean age 50.8 ± 13.0 years) sought to examine the reliability and validity of measurement scales for physical activity (PA) self-efficacy and outcome expectations. Participants completed demographic and anthropometric measurements, and a 23-item…

Internationally, the political appetite for educational measurement capable of capturing a metric of value for money and effectiveness has momentum. While most would agree with the need to assess costs relevant to quality to help support better governmental policy decisions about public spending, poorly understood measurement comes with unintended…

This work asks one simple question: "how reliable is the method used by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) to estimate projected rates of VET program completion?" In other words, how well do early projections align with actual completion rates some years later? Completion rates are simple to calculate with a…

As with other countries, Australia has been grappling with the identification, measurement and impact of disadvantage in higher education. In particular, the measurement of socio-economic status (SES) has been of central concern. The immediate solution in Australia has been the introduction of an "area" measure in which students' SES is…

Based on Chickering and Gamson's (1987) Seven Principles for Good Practice, this research project attempted to revitalize the principles by merging them with Merrill's (2006) Different Levels of Instructional Strategy. The aim was to develop, validate, and standardize a measurement instrument (DLISt7) using a pretest-posttest Internet…

Measuring the Academic Skills of University Students is a procedure developed in the 1990s at the University of Sydney's Language Centre to identify students in need of academic writing development by assessing examples of their written work against five criteria. This paper reviews the literature relating to the development of the procedure with…

This study explored motivation and engagement among North American (the United States and Canada; n = 1,540), U.K. (n = 1,558), Australian (n = 2,283), and Chinese (n = 3,753) secondary school students. Motivation and engagement were assessed via students' responses to the Motivation and Engagement Scale-High School (MES-HS). Confirmatory factor…

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…

This study examined the relationship between scores on the Behaviour Disorder Scale (BDS) and other assessments of challenging behavior in 100 adolescent and adult Australians with intellectual disabilities. The study found that the BDS was reliable and could be used to identify people with intellectual disabilities who exhibit behavioral…

Some 1,620 Australian high school students responded to 68 items that measure adolescent stressors. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to develop and test a model leading to the High School Stressors Scale. This scale, which has sound construct and predictive validity and adequate reliability, can be a useful instrument for studying…

Addresses applications of the coefficient of variation as a measure of educational inequality or as a means of measuring changes of inequality status. Suggests the Gini coefficient has many advantages over the coefficient of variation since it can be used with the Lorenz curve (Lorenz provides detail Gini omits). (BRR)

The aptitude tests used in Queensland (Australia) to standardize secondary school leavers' school evaluations was assessed for reliability with various student group sizes and for a range of abilities. The error found was significant for small and moderately sized groups, suggesting the need for care in test interpretation. (Author/MSE)

Describes development and use of the Course Experience Questionnaire to measure perceived teaching quality in higher education, and construction of a new generic teaching skills scale. Evaluation with large multidisciplinary samples in Australia confirmed reliability and validity of both short and long forms. Criterion and discriminant validity…