Studies highlighting the importance of parental involvement in schooling have multiplied over the past years. However, well-validated tools assessing the different dimensions of parental involvement are lacking, especially when addressing young students' perception of their parents' involvement. This study offers a preliminary validation of the…

Typically, only a minority of applicants to health professional training are invited to interview. However, pre-interview measures of cognitive skills predict for national licensure scores (Gauer et al. in "Med Educ Online" 21 2016) and subsequently licensure scores predict for performance in practice (Tamblyn et al. in "JAMA"…

Criterion-referenced measures, such as those used in the assessment of crime and violence, prioritize predictive accuracy (discrimination) at the expense of construct validity. In this article, we compared the discrimination and incremental validity of three commonly used criterion-referenced measures for sex offenders (Rapid Risk Assessment for…

Despite advances in child maltreatment research, accurate measurement of exposure remains a key issue. In this study, we evaluated a short form (CEVQ-SF) of the Childhood Experiences of Violence Questionnaire (CEVQ) in a sample of adolescents involved with child protection services in an urban city in Ontario, Canada. Focusing on the two most…

There are increasing numbers of non-native English speaking applicants to Canadian universities (AUCC 2008a, 2010), which are committed to promoting linguistic and cultural diversity (AUCC 2008b). One result of this trend is that university admissions officers, as gatekeepers, are faced with a growing and potentially confusing array of language…

A new scale, the Student Perception of University Support and Structure Scale (SPUSS), was developed for research on the transition to university. The scale was based on concepts derived from Baumrind's (1971) theory of parenting styles. Data were obtained from two separate cohorts of freshmen (n=759 and 397) attending six Canadian universities of…

Promising new adolescent risk assessment tools are being incorporated into clinical practice but currently possess limited evidence of predictive validity regarding their individual and/or combined use in risk assessments. The current study compares three structured adolescent risk instruments, Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory…

The article discusses a scenario-based dieting self-efficacy scale, the DIET-SE, developed from dieter's inventory of eating temptations (DIET). The DIET-SE consists of items that describe scenarios of eating temptations for a range of dieting situations, including high-caloric food temptations. Four studies assessed the psychometric properties of…

Reliability, factorial complexity, and predictive validity of the Test of Syntactic Abilities Screening Test were determined from the responses of mildly hearing impaired, severely hearing impaired, and profoundly deaf students. Results showed that the test was unifactorial. Use of the total score to discriminate among students is justified.…

Based on three independent samples of high school adolescents in central Canada, aged 12 to 18 years, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to identify, test, and cross-validate first-order and second-order factorial structures underlying the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Specifically, the study…

The purpose was to collect concurrent and predictive validity data for three study skill instruments frequently used for diagnostic purposes in Canadian high schools and universities. Tests examined were: McGraw-Hill Study Skills Test; McGraw-Hill Inventory of Study Habits and Attitudes; and Study Attitudes and Methods Survey. (Author)

Urban Canadian sixth-graders (n=84) were tested on 80 arithmetic word problems developed as part of a larger set to reflect individual differences in problem solving. Problems varied in complexity of language and amount of extraneous information present. Results indicated substantial internal consistency and concurrent validity relative to…

Emphasizes the importance of using both the factorial analyses of the interitem correlations and the 'predictive validity' coefficients as complementary empirical evidence for moving toward both the refinement of a theoretical conception of modernity and the revision of measures of modern attitudes. (Author/JM)

Universities training teachers have a responsibility to select the best applicants for pre-service teacher training. This study examines the validity of the Human Relations Incident (HRI), an instrument designed to predict the effectiveness of pre-service applicants. High and low scoring subjects were selected based on their HRI scores. Their…