Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Falling In Line: Curricular Alignment In A Library Credit Course, Michael Aldrich

Georgia Library Quarterly

The article discusses the usefulness of curricular alignment and how it can be achieved in teaching a library & information science course.

Northside Empire And Empowerment Business Assessment, Syracuse University. Maxwell School. Community Benchmarks Program

Community Benchmarks Program

This report presents data collected from businesses within the Northside Empire and Empowerment economic development zones in Syracuse, New York. This information was gathered for the Northside Collaboratory. The purpose of this study is threefold: 1. Increase awareness of economic incentives available to businesses through the Empire and Empowerment Zone programs. 2. Identify business needs within the Northside community. 3. Develop an up-to-date directory of all Northside businesses.

A Web-Based Tool For Oral Practice And Assessment Of Grammatical Structures, Heather Colleen Torrie

Theses and Dissertations

The grammar course objectives at Brigham Young University's English Language Center (ELC) are a list of grammar structures for each level that students are expected to be able to master. These objectives currently are only measured by pencil-paper grammar tests, providing information regarding receptive grammar ability only. Therefore, there is a need for an oral grammar assessment to measure productive grammar ability, providing diagnostic and achievement information about the specific grammar objectives. This project is a web-based oral grammar assessment tool that enables teachers to assess students' mastery of the structures covered in the ELC grammar classes. The core of …

Ils Assessment: A Background Document, Cathy Maskell Dr., Jennifer Soutter

Leddy Library Reports

This document is intended as a first step in evaluating the current environment with respect to Integrated Library Systems (ILS). To date ILSs have been proprietary monolithic systems encompassing the major operations of the library: circulation, acquisitions, cataloguing and a public catalogue or OPAC.

Staying On Course When Riding The Rapids Of Change: Meeting The Challenges Of Assessment, Jeffery S. Gates

Library Faculty Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Correlation Between The Eating Attitudes Test And Body Shape Questionnaire, Maren L. Kanekoa

Theses and Dissertations

This research examined the relationship between eating attitudes and body image dissatisfaction using the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT) and the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ). Three cohorts of almost 2,000 undergraduate females from Brigham Young University were given the EAT and BSQ twice a year for two to four years, depending upon their year of entrance to BYU. The data collected were analyzed using correlational statistics. Results indicated that a high positive correlation between the EAT and BSQ existed across semesters and cohorts.

Understanding Patron Needs And Resource Usage In The Networked Academy, Win Shih

Win Shih

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to better understand various aspects of patrons’ access to library’s electronic resources and services via its Web site, their motivation, and the resources they used.

Brief Description: As library resources and services continue to evolve rapidly and ever-more-sophisticatedly along technological vectors, the imperative persists for librarians to develop an innovative, systemic methodology for fathoming the effectiveness in meeting the demands and necessities of our less-visible, yet omnipresent and “omni-diverse” patrons, as well as for promoting efficient resource management and capacity planning.

Methods: Traditional, web-transactional log analyses possess a raft of merits, including unobtrusive …

Complex Questions, Evolving Answers: Creating A Multidimensional Assessment Strategy To Build Support For The “Teaching Library”, P. S. Mcmillen, A. M. Deitering

Library Faculty Publications

Since 2001, librarians at Oregon State University's Valley Library have been working to build a "teaching library" supported by a clearly articulated instruction program. From the start, we believed that we needed to assess the teaching library's impact, not only to determine the success or failure of our efforts but also to demonstrate the need for intentional, proactive in formation literacy instruction on our campus. No single assessment tool or method proved adequate to effectively measure student learning happening both inside and outside the library. We describe our evolving, multi-pronged approach to measuring the impact of the library on student …

Research Practices Survey Project 2006-07, Carolyn Sandford, Jo Beld, Nancy Millinchamp, Ann Zawistoski, Gould Library Reference And Instruction Department

Staff and Faculty Work

The Gould library has taken a lead role in a MITC / NITLE grant to create a web-based assessment tool to measure the information literacy of incoming students, before they've had any college library instruction. This grant-funded project was originally called the First Year Information Literacy in the Liberal Arts Assessment (FYILLAA), and has since become a nationally administered survey called the Research Practices Survey.

The first full implementation of the survey happened in late summer and early fall 2005. Five of the schools, Carleton, University of Chicago, Grinnell, Macalester, and St. Olaf, had high enough response rates to allow …

Crossing Boundaries: Collaborating To Assess Information Literacy [Acrl Conference], Carolyn Sanford, Jo Beld, Nancy Millichap

Staff and Faculty Work

Carolyn Sanford, Jo Beld and Nancy Millichap gave presentation given at the 2007 ACRL conference session.

Planning, Building, And Assessing An Online Information Literacy Tutorial: The Lobo Experience, Megan Oakleaf

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Each fall, first-year students arrive at colleges across the country with widely varying abilities to complete library research assignments. Some students enter higher education as veterans of the information seeking process, armed with strong school library media preparation and ready to conquer any research assignment. Far more first-year students are over-reliant on Internet resources, confused about distinctions between scholarly and popular sources, daunted by scores of article databases, and mystified by the LC classification system. Academic librarians face the challenge of establishing baseline information literacy skills in all students, often with limited time and resources. One way to confront this …

The Gambling Functional Assessment (Gfa): An Assessment Device For Identification Of The Maintaining Variables Of Pathological Gambling, Mark R. Dixon, Taylor E. Johnson

Analysis of Gambling Behavior

The present paper describes the rationale and presents an assess-ment device for the identification of functional control of patholog-ical gambling behavior. It is suggested in this paper that only through identification of function and eventual treatment based on such function will interventions for the treatment of pathological gamblers become successful. A 20-item self-report format as-sessment is presented along with the scoring key for the instru-ment. Suggestions for future research on the psychometrics of the proposed instrument are presented along with implications for use in both research and clinical treatment facilities.

Testing The Validity Of The Recovery Assessment Scale Using An Australian Sample, Mandy Mcnaught, Peter Caputi, Lindsay G. Oades, Frank P. Deane

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Objective: Mental health services in Australia are increasingly becoming recovery orientated. However, there are varying meanings for recovery and few measures that specifically target recovery outcomes. The current study aimed to assess the construct and concurrent validity of a patient self-report measure, the Recovery Assessment Scale (RAS).

Method: Participants were 168 individuals with severe and persistent psychiatric disability who were participants in the Australian Integrated Mental Health Initiative (AIMhi) project. They completed self-report recovery and other mental health measures and their case workers completed the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out to …

Tariffs, Subsidies And Profits: A Re-Assessment Of Structural Change In Australia 1901-1939, David Merrett, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper offers a re-interpretation of the drivers of structural change in Australia from federation until the outbreak of World War II. The broad story of structural change is that manufacturing increased its relative share of both output and employment while the share of the farm sector and mining contracted. The large tertiary sector, including construction, oscillated around its mean. The conventional wisdom is that these shifts were largely the result of government policy, particularly the increase in trade barriers that stimulated import substitution by manufacturers. However, if the unit of analysis is the firm rather than the economy then …

Water Quality Assessment - Issues From A Laboratory Management Perspective, Robert John Morrison, Mark R. O'Donnell, D. Springer

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

This paper considers issues relating to the measurement of water quality parameters in the laboratory, especially an external (usually commercial) laboratory. Many organisations now use testing laboratories for water quality measurements, a process that has advantages and some limitations. The interaction between the testing laboratory and the organization requiring the data is crucial, and this paper looks at some aspects where a full appreciation of the role of each partner is important. These include limits of detection and reporting, measurement uncertainty, sample storage and preservation times, and various quality control procedures.

Synthesis Of Novel 3'-Spirocyclic-Oxindole Derivatives And Assessment Of Their Cytostatic Activities, Sarah Yong, Alison T. Ung, Stephen G. Pyne, Brian W. Skelton, Allan H. White

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

The synthesis of some novel 3′-spirocyclic-oxindole compounds, based on the spiro[indole-3,5′-isoxazolidin]-2(1H)-one, the 2′H-spiro[indole-3,6′-[1,3]oxazinane]-2,2′(1H)-dione and the 2′H-spiro[indoline-3,3′-pyrrolo[1,2-c][1,3′]oxazine]-1′,2(1H)-dione heterocyclic structures, is described. These compounds were prepared from methyl α-(2-nitrophenyl)acrylate via [1,3]-dipolar cycloaddition reactions with two acyclic nitrones and one cyclic nitrone followed by reduction of the cycloadducts and then treatment with triphosgene. Two of these compounds showed significant cytostatic activity on three cancer cell lines with GI₅₀ values of 2.6–4.1 μM on the human breast cancer cell line, MCF-7.

Strategic Analysis Adaptation Assessment: An Alternative To The Storyline Scenario, Susan Krumdieck, Mohammed Imroz Sohel

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Scenarios of future trends are widely used by government and international agencies to inform decision-making. While story line scenarios may be useful for business or government thinking, they are not effective at informing engineering research, innovation and design, and add very little to the understanding of sustainability. This paper presents a strategic analysis approach to complex systems, which relies on identification of risks to important activities and wellbeing. This method mimics the actual processes of anthropogenic continuity, where people explore, experiment, learn from success and mistakes, and adapt and evolve. The method is applied to the case study of transportation …

Assessment Of Drucker-Prager Type Plasticity Models For Predicting The Behaviour Of Frp-Confined Concrete, T Yu, J G. Teng, Y L. Wong, S L. Dong

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper presents a critical assessment of the ability of existing Drucker-Prager (D-P) type plasticity models to predict the behaviour of confined concrete using both experimental observations and a recent analytical model. This assessment shows that for a D-P plasticity model to succeed in predicting the behaviour of FRP-confined and other passively-confined concrete, it needs to possess the following three features: (a) a yield criterion which includes the third deviatoric stress invariant, (b) a hardening/softening rule which is dependent on the confining pressure; and (c) a flow rule which is dependent on both the confining pressure and the rate of …

A Study Into The Use Of Computer Aided Assessment To Enhance Formative Assessment During The Early Stages Of Undergraduate Chemistry Courses, Simon B. Bedford, Gareth J. Price

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

A Virtual Learning Environment (WebCT and latter Moodle) was used to provide students with instant, meaningful feedback on their study of chemistry units during their first semester at University. Short multiple choice questions (MCQ's) were written covering each segment of material delivered in lectures and made available to students over the University computer intranet to allow "24/7" access. The most important aspect of the work was the feedback offered to students within the questions, which was written by undergraduate students to ensure its usefulness. The vast majority of the cohort used the MCQ's, most to gain formative feedback and some …

An Assessment Of The Research Performance Of Commerce Faculties In Australia, Abbas Valadkhani, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

There is a growing policy focus in Australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment. However, most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level, an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities, and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines. We use cluster analysis to classify one of the ten broad fields of education, that is, management and commerce. Using averaged and available data for 2000-2004 on various research measures, partial rankings are provided. Factor analysis is utilised to generate full-multidimensional rankings within the resulting clusters. Our results show that low total research …

Inra Water Resource Management Research And Educationneeds Assessment Project, Douglas B. Jackson-Smith, Sandra Marquart-Pyatt, C. Harris, A. Lovecraft, E. Shanahan, P. Wanschneider

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The Water Resources Research Needs Assessment team received funding in summer 2006 from the Inland Northwest Research Alliance (INRA) Water Resources Steering Committee to conduct a structured needs assessment study. The study was motivated by the desire to allow future INRA research and educational programs to meet better the needs of water resources managers in the five state INRA region.

Quantifying Students' Scientific Problem Solving Efficiency And Effectiveness, Ronald H. Stevens, Vandana Thadani

Psychological Science Faculty Works

Using online problem-solving tasks and machine learning tools, a measure has been developed to quantify the effectiveness and efficiency of students’ problem solving strategies. This measure can be normalized across problem solving tasks allowing the efficiency of problem solving to be measured across individuals, classes, schools and science domains. This extensible approach has relevance for helping teachers to teach, students to learn, and administrators to make intelligent, data-driven decisions via documentation of students’ problem solving progress.

Utilizing Focus Groups To Evaluate An Information Literacy Program In A General Biology Course, Betsy S. Hopkins

Faculty Publications

The Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University (BYU) recently implemented a number of information literacy strategies to help students in Biology 100, a large general education class, find resources for their term assignment. The library's services for Biology 100 students were evaluated using focus groups composed of both teaching assistants and students. This paper will describe the class and the assignment, discuss the impact the class had on library staff, detail the efforts of the staff to meet the needs of Biology 100 students, and present results of focus groups used to evaluate the library's outreach and teaching …

Assessing The Influence Of Religion On Health Behavior, David B. Creel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A primary aim of this study was to confirm the factor structure of the Health and Religious Congruency Scale (HARCS), a measure previously developed by the same research team. The HARCS questions directly link religious beliefs/activities to health behaviors. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that the current data fit poorly to the factor structure found in the pilot study. Because the current sample was more religiously diverse than the pilot study sample, and could potentially provide a factor structure that better reflects the views of individuals from different religious affiliations, a principal components analysis was conducted on the current data. …

Assessing Treatment Integrity In Behavioral Consultation, Lee Wilkinson

Lee A Wilkinson, PhD

The trend in school psychology services is a shift from an emphasis on an assessment-based paradigm to one of consultation problem-solving and behavioral intervention. A critical component of consultation-derived interventions and behavior change is treatment integrity. Treatment integrity (or fidelity) refers to the extent to which an intervention is implemented as intended (or planned). Although its importance has been acknowledged in the literature, this construct has largely been neglected in consultation research and practice. This article describes practical approaches for assessing and monitoring the integrity of treatments implemented during the problem-solving process. A treatment-monitoring interview (TMI) is proposed as an …