Understanding human motivation requires gauging individuals' strivings to be effective in controlling goal pursuits and establishing the truth about themselves and their experiences. Two constructs, assessment and locomotion, capture well truth and control strivings, respectively. The validation process of the instruments measuring assessment…

The purpose of this study was to apply two types of Differential Item Functioning (DIF), net and global DIF, as well as the framework of Differential Step Functioning (DSF) to real testing data to investigate measurement invariance related to test language. Data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)-2006 polytomously scored…

Standardized measures are often used as an index of students' reading comprehension and scores have important implications, particularly for students who perform below expectations. This study examined secondary-level students' patterns of responding and the prevalence and impact of non-attempted items on a timed, group-administered,…

The purpose of this research was to determine whether child, parent, and teacher characteristics such as sex, socioeconomic status (SES), parental depressive symptoms, the number of years of teaching experience, number of children in the classroom, and teachers' disciplinary self-efficacy predict deviations from maternal ratings in a…

The goal of this study was to develop a parent school climate survey of high practical utility, grounded in theory, and supported by evidence of the reliability of its scores and validity of the inferences for their use. The Delaware School Climate Survey-Home is comprised of seven factors: Teacher-Student Relations, Student-Student Relations,…

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…

This study reports on the construction of a questionnaire to assess ninth-grade students' use of self-regulated strategies for school writing tasks. Exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses were conducted to validate the factor structure of the instrument. The initial factor analytic stage (n = 296) revealed a 13-factor scale,…

The Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) developed by Gresham and Elliott (1990) is a multirater, norm-referenced instrument measuring social skills and adaptive behavior in preschool children. The aims of the present study were (a) to test the factorial structure of the Parent Form of the SSRS for the first time with a German preschool sample (391…

The Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability Third Edition is developed using the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) measurement-theory test design as the instrument's theoretical blueprint. The instrument provides users with cognitive scores based on the Cognitive Performance Model (CPM); however, the CPM is not a part of CHC theory. Within the…

Adapted from the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised, the Chinese Early Childhood Program Rating Scale (CECPRS) is a culturally comparable measure for assessing the quality of early childhood education and care programs in the Chinese cultural/social contexts. In this study, 176 kindergarten classrooms were rated with CECPRS on eight…

The predictive validity and accuracy of an oral reading fluency (ORF) measure for a statewide assessment in English language arts was examined for second-grade native English speakers (NESs) and English learners (ELs) with varying levels of English proficiency. In addition to comparing ELs with native English speakers, the impact of English…

This study contributed to the school readiness literature by examining the factor structure and reliability of a revised version of the Kindergarten Student Entrance Profile (KSEP). Teachers rated 579 Latino/a children during the first month of kindergarten using the KSEP. Factor analysis procedures (exploratory factor analysis [EFA] and…

Two exploratory bifactor methods (e.g., Schmid-Leiman [SL] and exploratory bifactor analysis [EBFA]) were used to investigate the structure of the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ-III) Cognitive in early school age (age 6-8). The SL procedure is recognized by factor analysts as a preferred method for EBFA. Jennrich and Bentler recently developed an…

The psychometric properties of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale-Second Edition (RCMAS-2) were examined in a sample of 1,003 U.S. elementary and secondary students in Grades 2 to 12. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were performed comparing the five-factor (target) model consisting of three anxiety (Physiological Anxiety,…

The Student Engagement Instrument (SEI) is a self-report measure of cognitive and affective engagement with school. Prior SEI validation studies have focused primarily on construct validity through analyses of internal consistency, factor analysis, and measurement invariance. Results are presented here from a two-pronged study of the criterion…