Education Commons^™

Is Seeing Believing? Leveraging Modality And Similarity In A Belonging Intervention, Xiao-Yin Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Students who feel a greater sense of belonging in college often experience more positive academic outcomes. Social-psychological interventions have been shown to improve students’ sense of belonging. However, few studies have examined the social cognitive mechanisms through which interventions work. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of two such mechanisms—delivery modality and students’ perceived similarity to peer models—on the efficacy of a narrative-based, social belonging intervention. First-year students (N = 1,329) from a public, land-grant university in the southeastern U.S. were randomly assigned to a social belonging intervention (i.e., a video- or written-based narrative from peers …

Measuring Postsecondary Students’ Sense Of Belonging: Psychometric Investigations Into Student Demographics And Course Delivery Contexts, John Eric M. Novosel-Lingat

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Research suggests sense of belonging in academic contexts influences student academic outcomes and well-being. Instruments (i.e., surveys, questionnaires) developed to measure sense of belonging mainly focus on the experience of students in middle grades. Few instruments measure sense of belonging experienced by postsecondary students, despite many colleges and universities seeking to improve retention, persistence, and graduation by addressing this complex construct. Furthermore, the rapid growth of online courses necessitates and presents an opportunity to employ psychometric investigations to explore the sense of belonging experienced by both face-to-face and online students. The first of the two studies conducted for this dissertation …

A Bifactor Approach To Dimensionality Assessment, David Michael Dueber

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Bifactor confirmatory factor analysis models and statistical indices computed from them have previously been used to provide evidence for the appropriateness of utilizing a unidimensional interpretation of multidimensional data. However, the ability of bifactor indices to aid in the assessment of subscore strength has not been investigated.

A simulation study was conducted to relate bifactor indices to the strength of subscores corresponding to specific factors. The bifactor indices OmegaHS and ECV_SS were found to be strongly predictive of subscore strength conditional upon OmegaS. The number of factors was also found to play a minor role in this relationship. Cutoffs …

Predicting Pre-Service Teachers’ Self-Efficacy In Content Area Reading: A Multiple Regression Analysis, Fatih Destebasi

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The main purpose of this study was to predict secondary and middle school pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy in content area reading by using demographic, academic achievement, literacy methods courses, faculty support, preparedness for content area reading, and attitudes toward teaching reading in content classrooms as variables. Based on that purpose, this study was guided by the following research question: What are the predictors of secondary and middle school pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy in content area reading among variables from verbal persuasion of teacher education faculty, preparedness for content area reading, attitudes toward teaching reading in content classrooms, number of literacy method courses, …

Assessing The Performance Of Two Procedures For Detecting Differential Item Functioning Within The Multilevel Partial Credit Model, Carol Hanley

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This is a simulation study that evaluates the performances of two models for the detection of uniform differential item functioning (DIF). Simulated data are generated by a multilevel partial credit model (MLPCM). The purpose of this study was to compare the accuracy of two DIF detection procedures, hierarchical ordinal logistic regression (HOLR) for multilevel data and multilevel generalized Mantel-Haenszel (MGMH: French & Finch, 2013; French, Finch, & Imekus, 2019). Conditions manipulated were the number of participants per cluster (20, 40), number of clusters (50, 100, 200), DIF magnitude (0, .4, .8), and magnitude of intraclass correlation coefficient (.05, .25, .45). …

A Systematic Review Of Peer-Mediated Interventions And Topic Maintenance For Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Alyssa Colston

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the current literature on the use of peer mediated instruction to address topic maintenance for indiviuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A literature review using the standards recommended by the What Works Clearinghouse was conducted. The studies included in the review met the following criteria: (a) use of SCRD; (b) inclusion of at least one participant with ASD as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Mental Disorders, 4th edition, Text Revision (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) or DSM-5 diagnosis of ASD; (c) examination of the use of peer instruction containing any of the …

Can Less Be More? Study Load And Its Effect On Science Achievement Among Chinese Eighth-Grade Students, Xian Wu

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The present study addressed a core research question of “Can less be more?” concerning study load, which has become increasingly worrisome and controversial around the world. This idea reflects the philosophy of pursuing efficiency and effectiveness on learning, namely that a lighter study load may result in more successful academic achievement. The study adopted the IPO (input-process-output) model to address five interrelated research questions: 1) What are the structural characteristics of study load? 2) Is there any individual difference in study load? 3) What are the characteristics of teachers and schools under which students tend to have a heavier study …