Socioeconomic status and gender are important demographic variables that strongly relate to academic achievement. This study examined the early literacy skills differences between 4 sociodemographic groups, namely, boys ineligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRL), girls ineligible for FRL, boys eligible for FRL, and girls eligible for FRL.…

Academic emphasis, collective efficacy, and faculty trust in students and parents (3 school characteristics positively associated with student achievement) are assumed to form a higher order latent construct, "academic optimism" (Hoy, Tarter, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2006a, 2006b). The aim of the present study is to corroborate the latent…

This study attempted to better understand the study behaviours of undergraduate students by categorizing students into distinctive typologies based on their self-reported study behaviours through an exploratory approach--Q factor analysis. A sample of 152 undergraduate students completed a survey instrument, the Study Behavior Inventory. The Q…

This paper reviews the literature on comparing online and paper course evaluations in higher education and provides a case study of a very large randomised trial on the topic. It presents a mixed but generally optimistic picture of online course evaluations with respect to response rates, what they indicate, and how to increase them. The paper…

This study focused on the stability and change in students' achievement goal orientations and whether the students' perceptions of the learning environment vary as a function of their achievement goal orientations. Participants were 169 students of the Finnish National Defense University. The students' goal orientations and their evaluations of…

The present study examined the factor structure of the Teacher Involvement Questionnaire (Involve-T) by means of exploratory factor analysis and examined the association between children's socio-emotional and behavioural problems and teacher-reported parental involvement in school, using structural equation modelling. The study was conducted with…

This study investigated the relationship between student achievement in statistics and factors at the student and teacher/classroom levels using the US 8th-grade Data and Chance content domain from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, 2007 (TIMSS, 2007). Using variables that have been linked to mathematics and statistics…

Test fairness and test bias are not synonymous concepts. Test bias refers to statistical evidence that the psychometrics or interpretation of test scores depend on group membership, such as gender or race, when such differences are not expected. A test that is grossly biased may be judged to be unfair, but test fairness concerns the broader, more…

Measurement invariance is an important prerequisite for the adequate comparison of group differences in test scores. In psychology, measurement invariance is typically investigated by means of linear factor analyses of subtest scores. These subtest scores typically result from summing the item scores. In this paper, we discuss 4 possible problems…

We estimated the invariance of educational achievement (EA) and learning attitudes (LA) measures across nations. A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to estimate the invariance of educational achievement and learning attitudes across 55 nations (Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] 2006 data, N = 354,203). The…

The school and especially the school leader's perceptions of a teacher's efficacy have influence on aspects of teaching ratings and performance, and this may facilitate or hinder beginning teacher success. This study examines the school leaders' perceptions of their beginning teachers' efficacy. The study's scope of teacher efficacy is…

The aim of this study was to evaluate possible consequences of using unidimensional item response theory (UIRT) on a multidimensional college admission test. The test consists of 5 subscales and can be divided into two sections, that is, it can be considered both as a unidimensional and a multidimensional test. The test was examined with both UIRT…

The purpose of the study is to construct and validate a Chinese self-regulated learning (SRL)-based reading instruction questionnaire (CSRIQ) and to examine the relationship between Chinese reading instruction and Hong Kong students' reading development from the SRL perspective. A total of 339 Grade 10 students completed the initial CSRIQ in Study…

The purpose of this study was to translate the original version of the Epistemic Belief Inventory developed by Schraw, Bendixen, and Dunkle (2002) for pre-service teachers in a Turkish context and validate its construct. Studies on the epistemological beliefs of Turkish students have been heretofore limited in number and have been largely…

Multiple traits of language proficiency as well as test method effects were concurrently analyzed to investigate interrelations of construct validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity using multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) matrices. A total of 585 test takers' scores were derived from the field test of the "Pearson Test of English…