Recent reviews of automated writing evaluation systems indicate lack of uniformity in the purpose, design, and assessment of such systems. Our work lies at the nexus of critical themes arising from these reviews. We describe our work on eRevise, an automated writing evaluation system focused on elementary students' text-based evidence-use. eRevise…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…

This study researched whether family members and significant others influence a woman's decision to obtain an abortion. Influence is defined by Merriam-Webster (2011) as the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways; power exerted over the minds or behaviors of others. The theoretical framework that will be used in…

This article attempts to demonstrate the psychometric properties and evidence of validity for a measure recently proposed in this journal, the Communication Components Inventory (CCI). Across two studies, a total of 903 undergraduate students completed one of the two response formats--dichotomous and scaled--of the CCI and the Multiple…

Examining the efficacy of literacy improvement, general education development (GED) completion, and GED completers' perceptions of college readiness and social capital was the purpose of this study. The participant sample (n = 321), derived from the target population (N = 1050), consisted of former participants of Adult Literacy Education…

Background: This study assessed the psychometrics of two measures--the "Matson Evaluation of Drug Side-effects" (MEDS) and the "Akathisia Ratings of Movement Scale" (ARMS)--and examined the symptom profile of akathisia in a sample of people with intellectual disability (ID). Method: Sixty-six participants formed three groups of…

This report summarizes research findings and implementation practices for teacher and principal value-added models (VAMs), as a first step in the Team Pennsylvania Foundation's (Team PA) pilot project to inform the development of a full, statewide model evaluation system. We have selected 21 studies that represent key issues and findings in the…