Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Setting The Foundation For Democratization: Assessing The Quality Of A Political Science Program In Egypt, Yasmin Khodary

Political Science

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the quality of a political science program in an Egyptian private university through assessing three particular dimensions: knowledge of political science core facts and theories; reading comprehension skills; and critical thinking (CT).

Design/methodology/approach – A case study research approach was used. The study relies also on a quantitative methodology. Quantitative data were collected from students in the second and fourth years of political science to assess their knowledge of core political science facts and theories, reading comprehension and CT through the online California Critical Thinking Skills Test.

Findings – Unlike …

How Students Information Literacy Skills Change Over Time: A Longitudinal Study, Veronica Wells

University Libraries Librarian and Staff Presentations

How do students’ information literacy skills change over the course of their undergraduate education? We assume or at least hope they will improve. But do they? And if so, by how much? At the University of the Pacific, we are using the SAILS (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) Test to assess undergraduate students’ information literacy skills and to see how they have changed over time. The SAILS Test is a multiple-choice test that has been used by more than 200 universities across the world. According to their website, the SAILS Test can “determine how well your students can navigate …

University Libraries Co-Curricular Outreach Plan July 2017 – June 2019, Rosan Mitola

Instruction Session and Workshop Materials

The purpose of this document is to align new co-curricular outreach efforts for undergraduate and graduate students with the University Libraries’ Strategic Framework

July 2017 - June 2019. The University Libraries contribute to student learning that takes place outside of the curriculum through a number of ways, throughout the academic year. This plan will be adapted and updated as needed to stay in alignment with the work of the Educational Initiatives department and the University Libraries.

Anxiety And Communication Competence In The Honors Basic Public Speaking Course: An Intervention And Formative Assessment, Joshua N. Westwick, Karla M. Hunter, Barbara A. Kleinjan

Basic Communication Course Annual

This case study examines the effectiveness of a formative assessment intervention in an honors section of a basic public speaking course. Previous research has found significantly higher levels of public speaking anxiety among honors students than among non-honors students and has therefore identified these students as a population at risk for high public speaking anxiety (PSA). As a result, this analysis tested a one-hour tutoring session designed not only to aid students in maximizing learning outcomes for the first speech of the course, but, subsequently, to enhance markers of student development through reduced PSA and increased self-perceived communication competence (SPCC). …

The Santa Clara Ethics Scale, Thomas G. Plante, Anna Mccreadie

Psychology

Ethics and ethical decision-making are important for well-functioning communities and societies, including college campuses. Yet, there are very few high quality, cost-effective, relevant, and easy-to-use assessment instruments currently available. This paper introduces the new Santa Clara Ethics Scale, a very brief no-cost questionnaire assessing general ethics. The 10-item scale was administered to 200 university students along with several other measures to assess convergent and divergent validity. Information regarding the validity and reliability of the scale along with test utility is presented. Implications for future research and use are discussed as well.

Do Your Library Spaces Help Entrepreneurs? Space Planning For Boosting Creative Thinking, Mark Bieraugel

Library Scholarship

Supporting entrepreneurship and innovation is a goal for many college campuses. How can your library support those goals? Should you add a makerspace to your library? Or make other costly changes? Library spaces help students think at a higher level, to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial. It is rare to have a dedicated spot on campus for thinking. Our libraries are those spaces. Spaces that strongly foster entrepreneurial thinking range from quiet reflective spaces to noisy collaborative spaces. You do not need to do an elaborate study to understand your library spaces. To assess your library spaces as they relate …

Benchmarking Vended Authority Control Practices In Arl Libraries (Presentation), Rebecca L. Mugridge, Nancy Poehlmann

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

This presentation shares the results of a survey of ARL libraries on the use of vended authority control at their institutions.

An Analysis And Comparison Of Wms-Iii And Wms-Iv Verbal Paired Associates: Practical Implications For Neuropsychologists, Anthony Paul Andrews

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined the performance of clinical outpatients on the Verbal Paired Associates (VPA) subtest from current and prior versions of the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS). It was predicted that VPA from the WMS-III (VPA3) would be similar in agreement to the WMS-IV (VPA4) and that VPA4 would show a stronger relationship than VPA3 with intellectual abilities, sustained attention, and executive function abilities as assessed by the WAIS-IV; CPT-2; and the TMT, Category Test, and Stroop, respectively. Thirty-six adults were administered both the WMS-III and the WMS-IV, along with the other measures as part of a larger neuropsychological battery. …

Rethinking Information Literacy Assessment: Relevance, Reliability, And Validity Of Constructs And Measures, Melissa Clark

Librarian and Staff Publications

Information literacy assessment has traditionally approached student learning as the acquisition of declarative knowledge, which can be measured with easily-graded true/false and multiple-choice questions. Although such measures may prove highly reliable in test-retest situations, they are not valid measures of knowledge or learning, because they fail to test procedural and conditional knowledge, both of which are essential for students to reach the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. This omission can partially explain the disconnect between scores on tests of information literacy and students’ continued poor performance on research assignments. Furthermore, information literacy assessment has failed to address the social and …

The Eyes Never Lie: Detecting Simulated Traumatic Brain Injury With Eye-Tracking, Robert John Kanser

Wayne State University Dissertations

Performance validity test (PVT) inaccuracies can be explained by both test and extra-test (e.g., research design components) factors. Eye-tracking is a promising technology to enhance assessment of performance validity. Prior research has established that ocular behaviors are reliable biomarkers of (un)conscious cognitive processes. Experimental research on deception has shown that ocular behaviors reliably distinguish feigned concealment of information from honest responding. The primary objective of this study was to examine the incremental utility of incorporating eye-tracking into a clinical PVT to distinguish adults with verified TBI from adults coached to feign cognitive impairment. A secondary objective was to determine the …

Multicultural Face Recognition Memory And Own-Race-Bias Among Adults With Acquired Brain Injury, Nia M. Billings

Wayne State University Dissertations

Own-race bias (ORB) is a well-documented phenomenon that may influence face memory, such that face memory is improved when the observed target matches the observer’s racial background. However, the clinical measures widely used in neuropsychological evaluations lack racial diversity that may disenfranchise and disadvantage minority patients. Further, these existing measures have been criticized for having inconsistent visual contrast and facial content, as well as too much variability of non-facial information which may confound its acceptability as a measure of face memory specifically. To address these limitations, standardized, multicultural images with validated facial expressions (Beaupré et al., 2000) were used to …

Ita Language Proficiency Testing: Recommended Replacement For The Speak® Test, Anne Marie Stoughton

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Oral language tests have been used since the 1950s to assess the proficiency of spoken language. In the 1980s and 1990s, the need for oral proficiency testing increased as states began to mandate that universities within their jurisdictions test the English proficiency of instructors due to growing concerns over international teaching assistants’ (ITAs) comprehensibility. Many universities turned to the Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit® (SPEAK test), a language proficiency test created and distributed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), as means to test ITA proficiency in English. ETS’s discontinuance of the SPEAK test in 2010 has forced, and is forcing, …

New Jersey Urban Enterprise Zone Program Assessment 2019, Thomas Edison State University, Pel Analytics, Anderson Economic Group, The John S. Watson Institute For Public Policy

Urban Mayors Policy Center

In 2019, the State of New Jersey sought an evaluation of its Urban Enterprise Zone (UEZ) Program to determine the program’s economic impact and make recommendations for the program’s future. The John S. Watson Institute of Public Policy of Thomas Edison State University joined with PEL Analytics and Anderson Economic Group to produce the following study. The main recommendation of this analysis is to retain the UEZ Program while instituting various changes to make it stronger. Recommended changes in brief include reinstating some form of Zone Assistance Funds (ZAFs), creating a better system to collect data and track outcomes, assisting …

Illuminating Social Justice In The Framework: Transformative Methodology, Concept Mapping And Learning Outcomes Development For Critical Information Literacy, Nicole A. Branch

Communications in Information Literacy

The intentional omission of learning outcomes from the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education has caused concern and criticism from some librarians; however, the call to action within the Framework to locally develop learning outcomes is an opportunity to illuminate the social justice, critical thinking, and higher order thinking elements of information literacy. This study applies the transformative research paradigm using the methodology of concept mapping to test the development of learning outcomes for one of the frames. Concept mapping is a mixed-methods approach and includes focus groups, hierarchical cluster analysis, and multidimensional scaling. The methodology has been …

Towards An Assessment Framework Of Reuse: A Knowledge Level Analysis Approach, Ghassan Beydoun, Achim Hoffmann, Rafael Valencia-Garcia, Jun Shen, Asifqumer Gill

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The process of assessing the suitability of reuse of a software component is complex. Indeed, software systems are typically developed as an assembly of existing components. The complexity of the assessment process is due to lack of clarity on how to compare the cost of adaptation of an existing component versus the cost of developing it from scratch. Indeed, often pursuit of reuse can lead to excessive rework and adaptation, or developing suites of components that often get neglected. This paper is an important step towards modelling the complex reuse assessment process. To assess the success factors that can underpin …

Through The Looking Glass: Viewing First-Year Composition Through The Lens Of Information Literacy, Alexandria Chisholm, Brett Spencer

Communications in Information Literacy

This paper presents a case study of how librarians can situate themselves as pedagogical partners by bringing their unique information literacy perspective and expertise to the programmatic assessment process. This report resulted from the Thun Library and the Penn State Berks Composition Program's collaboration to assess the institution’s first-year composition (FYC) course. From previous programmatic assessments of their students’ work, the faculty had a sense that students struggled with source use in their rhetoric but found it difficult to pinpoint students’ exact source issues. By adapting a rubric theoretically-grounded in the ACRL Framework to deconstruct the concept of source use …

Perceived ُSkill Level Of Librarians Working At Libraries Of Tehran Medical Universities, Sirous Panahi Associate Professor In Librarianship And Medical Information Department, Arezo Mirgaloye-Bayat, Leila Nemati Anaraki Associate Professor In Librarianship And Medical Information Department

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Introduction: This study conducted to assess the discipline specific and general skill level of librarians working in libraries of the top three Iranian medical universities in Tehran.

Methods: The survey was carried out among all 115 librarians working in the libraries of Iran, Tehran and Shahid-Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA.

Results: The participants’ perceived skill level in discipline specific set of skills was relatively unsatisfactory in total while their skill level in general skills was relatively satisfactory. The mean scores of the participants’ skill level in six categories of discipline …

Internalized Homophobia Of Lgb Emerging Adults: Identity Complexities And Mental Health, Emily Christine Newbury

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Meyer’s (2003) minority stress model explores the relationship between the social stress of sexual minorities and mental health. Internalized homophobia is linked to feelings of shame, guilt, and worthlessness, and contributes to the development of mental health problems (Ramirez-Valles, Molina, & Dirkes, 2013). The present study examined the relationship between internalized homophobia and mental health in young adults who identify as LGB. Participants (N =130) were recruited from universities in Connecticut and Georgia, as well as from the Amazon Mechanical Turk website. It was hypothesized that higher levels of internalized homophobia would be related to higher levels of self-reported anxiety, …

Getting The Blend Right: Public-Private Partnerships In Risk Management, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

The question of whether there is too much or too little regulation in the United States has driven much political debate for decades. The more important question, though, is not about getting the right amount of regulation but it is about finding the best ways for the public and private sectors to interact. When it comes to managing risk in society, this latter question is necessarily one of choosing between different kinds of structures—or partnerships—between public and private institutions. Sometimes these partnerships are adversarial, as they can be with government regulation. Other times they are seemingly invisible, such as when …

Assessing The Sustainability Of Collaborations Between Local Health Departments And Nonprofit Hospitals For Population Health, Christopher Mierow Maylahn

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In 2008, New York’s health commissioner asked LHDs and nonprofit hospitals to collaborate with community partners to conduct community health needs assessments, identify two or three health priorities to focus on, and implement evidence-based strategies to address them. The actions taken as part of the New York State Prevention Agenda mirrored the IRS rules and PHAB recommendations that followed. The dearth of published studies on public health-hospital collaborations and the momentum to understand how communities in New York have responded to the IRS rules and PHAB standards are the impetus for this research.

Executive Functions As Moderators Of Response To Behavioral Interventions For Adolescents With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Stephen J. Molitor

Theses and Dissertations

Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience significant academic impairment and multiple interventions have been developed to address common academic problems, such as difficulties with homework, organization, and planning skills. Given cost and resource constraints, research is needed on factors that mental health providers can use to select the most appropriate interventions. To date, there has been minimal research evaluating moderators of response to ADHD interventions. Further, many of the variables that have been studied do not have strong theoretical ties to the mechanisms of change invoked by the interventions. This study examined potential moderators of treatment response to two academic …

Preschool Mathematics Performance And Executive Function: Rural-Urban Comparisons Across Time, Jacob Esplin, Ann Berhout Austin, Belinda Blevins-Knabe, Brionne Thompson, Robert C. Corwyn

Human Development and Family Studies Faculty Publications

This longitudinal study, with urban and rural preschool children, examines the relationship between executive function (EF) and mathematics. A panel of direct and indirect measures of EF were used to determine which EF measures were most predictive and a measure of mathematics assessed both numeracy and geometry skill. One hundred eighteen children, ages 39 to 68 months, and their preschool teachers were included, with assessments given twice, about six months apart. EF measures were compared by the amount of variance in mathematics skill each claimed, including the influence of a child’s age, gender, and rural-urban context. Results suggest the child’s …

Childhood And Trauma: The Effects Of Adverse Childhood Experiences On The Brain, Behavior, And Learning In The Elementary School Classroom, Aeryn Aguilar

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

A variety of studies have been conducted on how trauma, caused by emotional, physical, or verbal abuse, impact children’s lives. Many of the studies which involved observations and assessments were done with the preexisting knowledge that these children had been through a traumatic experience. Instead of looking at behavior of known cases, this study’s goal is to find out whether or not children’s observable behaviors can predict cases of trauma. For example, is acting out or defiance a key sign of trauma or is it part of the typical development for the elementary school-age group? This thesis takes into account …

Striving For Credibility In The Face Of Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory Study Of Extreme Hardship Immigration Psychological Evaluations, Susan M. Burke

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Psychological evaluations are frequently used in extreme hardship immigration cases in the United States. These evaluations are complex; they are inherently ambiguous, and they require extensive training and specialized knowledge. General guidance for mental health professionals is available from professional organizations, the federal government, and articles in the legal and mental health literature. However, there is a lack of detailed guidance, best practices, training, and supervision so many evaluators learn on their own. Unfortunately, this has resulted in assessment processes and evaluation reports that vary widely in terms of professionalism and quality which negatively impacts the vulnerable families seeking these …

The Provision Of Psychological Assessment Feedback To Children: A Survey Of Practitioners, Caitlin P. Dolan

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Psychological assessment, long a cornerstone of psychological practice, has been the subject of substantial empirical research and clinical devotion. Far less attention, however, has been given to the process of assessment feedback—the task of communicating psychological test results to clients. Research has demonstrated the therapeutic value of providing clients with feedback, including improved insight and functioning. Providing assessment feedback is also mandated by professional standards. Still, to date, there is minimal published research examining the actual feedback practices of psychologists, or their perspectives on such practices. That which does exist focuses on adult testing clients, not children. It is largely …