The psychometric properties of a parent-completed developmental questionnaire for children at 6 years of age were investigated. Currently, few developmental screening instruments for 6-year-old children have been validated, and most available instruments are designed to be completed by teachers or professionals, who may not witness an optimal sample of child behavior. Thus a screening tool with robust psychometric properties is needed that can be completed by parents or caregivers who see the child across settings and time. A total of 169 children participated in this research. Data collection included online and paper completion during well child visits, in clinics, at preschool programs, and in parents' homes. A random subsample was asked to participate in reliability and convergent validity studies. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to measure internal consistency reliability. Results indicated a Cronbach alpha of agreement with the Child Development Inventory was used. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis with categorical data confirmed the 6-Year Ages and Stages Questionnaire domains, e.g., communication, personal social, fine motor, gross motor, and problem solving. Limitations of the current study and directions for future research are discussed. / 10000-01-01

Social action and communication constitute the building blocks in the organizational structure and the agents of change, as well as shape the relationships among working parties, that can become inconsistent, due to the same desire of two or more people for a similar resource which is in scarcity, introducing the issue of human relations in an organizational context and especially the issue of conflict prevention. In this study we investigate conflict in a group based on different parameters by providing some insights on what is the impact between these different factors when interrelated. The research is carried out by adopting the survey path and performing multivariate statistical analysis techniques where we simultaneously examine the relationship between latent factors in an organizational conflict environment.

abstract: The tendency for psychopathology to aggregate within families is well-documented, though little is known regarding the level of specificity at which familial transmission of symptomology occurs. The current study first tested competing higher-order structures of psychopathology in adolescence, indexing general and more specific latent factors. Second, parent-offspring transmission was tested for broadband domain specificity versus transmission of a general liability for psychopathology. Lastly, genetic and environmental mechanisms underlying the familial aggregation of psychopathology were examined using nuclear twin-family models. The sample was comprised of five hundred adolescent twin pairs (mean age 13.24 years) and their parents drawn from the Wisconsin Twin Project. Twins and parents completed independent diagnostic interviews. For aim 1, correlated factors, bifactor, and general-factor models were tested using adolescent symptom count data. For aim 2, structural equation modeling was used to determine whether broadband domain-specific transmission effects were necessary to capture parent-offspring resemblance in psychopathology above and beyond a general transmission effect indexed by the latent correlation between a parental internalizing factor and offspring P-factor. For aim 3, general factor models were fitted in both generations, and factor scores were subsequently extracted and used in nuclear twin-family model testing. Results indicated that the bifactor model exhibited the best fit to the adolescent data. Familial aggregation of psychopathology was sufficiently accounted for by the transmission of a general liability. Lastly, the best fitting reduced nuclear twin-family model indicated that additive genetic, sibling-specific shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences contributed to general psychopathology. Parent-offspring transmission was accounted for by shared genetics only, whereas co-twin aggregation was additionally explained by sibling-specific shared environmental factors. Results provide novel insight into the specificity and etiology of the familial aggregation of psychopathology. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2019

Innovative people seize the opportunity to make lives better and more comfortable, which contribute to economy growth and financial gain. Stakeholders study innovativeness of business students, in depth, to understand gender differences, and the factors affecting students' innovativeness. Literature explains how males and females differ in their proneness to guilt and shame. However, a model that explains the dynamic of guilt, shame, and gender on innovativeness will help make policies to improve students' innovativeness. This study describes factor analysis approach to examine the TOSCA-3 subscales guilt, shame, and the DNA instrument of innovativeness. It also describes the measurement invariance across gender for each construct, and for the full measurement model to identify the differences between genders. Moreover, this study examines the total effect of gender on innovativeness, which includes the direct effect, and indirect effect via guilt and shame. The results indicated that guilt is positively associated with innovativeness, and shame and gender are negatively associated with innovativeness. This dissertation can be freely accessed and downloaded from (http://etd.byu.edu/).

More than 8 million of America's middle and high school students are struggling readers. Two-thirds of all eighth graders read below grade level, and the reading scores of high school students have not improved since 1974. Low literacy levels affect learning in all subject areas and impede student opportunity for future success. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the accountability measures associated with the Act have heightened public awareness of the deficiency in adolescent literacy. School districts are choosing to respond in one of two ways. Some school districts are opting to invest in teacher-proof curricula that negate the effect of the teacher. Other districts are opting to invest in the professional development of their teachers. The goal of this study was to support district efforts to provide strategic professional development opportunities for teachers by investigating the effects of teacher efficacy for instructional strategies, classroom management and student engagement on ninth and tenth grade students' reading achievement. Teachers with high efficacy were hypothesized to impact students' reading gains positively. Student contextual variables of prior achievement, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and grade were controlled for in the study. The participants included 2,061 students in 23 classrooms taught by 110 teachers in two school districts on the west coast of Florida. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant relationship between teacher efficacy and student reading achievement gains. The only variables of statistical significance were race (white vs. Non-white) and grade. As more researchers use the findings and recommendations from this study to inform new investigations of the complex relationship between teacher efficacy and student achievement in reading, teacher educators, policymakers, teachers and administrators will be better informed as they continue to work towards improving the reading achievement scores of and narrowing the achievement gaps in adolescent literacy.

The aim of this thesis was to describe fatigue, functional limitations due to fatigue and health in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as to compare patients with individuals from the general population and to test if pulmonary rehabilitation can reduce fatigue and functional limitations, and thus improve health. A further aim was to test the Fatigue Impact Scale (FIS) among patients with COPD. Two studies (I, II) had a descriptive comparative design with data from 36 and 151 patients with COPD respectively, and 37 and 95 individuals respectively, randomly selected from the general population. One study (III) was a randomised pre-test post-test study with 12 patients with COPD randomised to 12 weeks’ pulmonary rehabilitation and 14 patients in a control group. In a further study (IV), the FIS was tested for validity and reliability among 296 patients with COPD who reported fatigue. Assessments: Structured questions frequency, duration and severity of fatigue, functional limitations due to fatigue with FIS, six minutes’ walking distance, hand grip strength, functional performance and satisfaction with Canadian Occupational Performance Measure and health with St George’s Hospital Respiratory Questionnaire and Short Form-36. Almost half of the patients with COPD had a problem with fatigue every day and experienced fatigue as a severe symptom. More than 44% reported that fatigue was one of the worst symptoms. The experience of fatigue was related to the patients’ functional performance and health perceptions. Patients with COPD experienced a higher frequency, longer daily duration and greater severity of fatigue than individuals from the general population. After a 12 week pulmonary rehabilitation programme, there were no statistically significant differences between the patients randomised to the rehabilitation group and those in the control group. The patients in the rehabilitation group improved walking distances, performance and satisfaction with regard to their own selected activities compared with baseline. Confirmatory factor analysis on the three-factor model proposed for FIS showed that the fit of the model was not acceptable. Further validation of the FIS resulted in a removal of 15 items (FIS-25) and support for Pipers´ theoretical framework of subjective manifestations of fatigue including physical, emotional and cognitive dimensions and a general behavioural factor. The internal consistency, sensitivity and stability correlations of FIS-25 were satisfactory. In conclusion, fatigue is a major concern among patients with COPD, impacting on functioning and health. Interventions with 12 weeks’ pulmonary rehabilitation might not be effective enough to reduce fatigue and the functional limitations due to fatigue. More research is needed to solve the symptom burden of fatigue and its impact on functioning and health in patients with COPD.

The purpose of the study was threefold: (1) to determine the factor structure of mathematical thinking at the within-classroom and at the between-classroom level / (2) to investigate the extent of variation in the relationships among different mathematical thinking constructs at the within- and between-classroom levels / and (3) to examine the cross-level interactions among different types of mathematical thinking. Previous research was extended by investigating the factor structure of mathematical thinking in derivative at the within- and between-classroom levels, and further examining the direct, indirect, and cross-level relations among different types of mathematical thinking. Multilevel analyses of a cross-sectional dataset containing two independent samples of undergraduate students nested within classrooms showed that the within-structure of mathematical thinking includes enactive, iconic, algorithmic, algebraic, formal, and axiomatic thinking, whereas the between-structure contains formal-axiomatic, proceptual-symbolic, and conceptual-embodied thinking. Major findings from the two-level mathematical thinking model revealed that: (1) enactive, iconic, algebraic, and axiomatic thinking varied primarily as a function of formal and algorithmic thinking / (2) the strongest direct effect of formal-axiomatic thinking was on proceptual-symbolic thinking / (3) the nature of the relationships was cyclic at the between-classroom level / (4) the within-classroom mathematical thinking constructs significantly moderate the relationships among conceptual-embodied, proceptual-symbolic, and formal-axiomatic thinking / and (5) the between-classroom mathematical thinking constructs moderate the relationships among enactive, iconic, algorithmic, algebraic, formal, and axiomatic thinking. The challenges when using multilevel exploratory factor analysis, multilevel confirmatory factor analysis, and multilevel structural equation modeling with categorical variables are emphasized. Methodological and educational implications of findings are discussed.

This study aimed to examine the internal structure, score reliability, scoring, and interpretation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit-S; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009) using a sample of engineering students (N = 610) from one large southeastern university located in the United States. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to compare four competing theoretical models: (a) a unidimensional model, (b) a two-factor model, (c) a second-order model, and (d) a bi-factor model. Given that researchers have used Grit-S as a single factor, a unidimensional model was examined. Two-factor and second-order models were considered based upon the work done by Duckworth, Peterson, Matthew, and Kelly (2007), and Duckworth and Quinn (2009). Finally, Reise, Morizot, and Hays (2007) have suggested a bi-factor model be considered when dealing with multidimensional scales given its ability to aid researches about the dimensionality and scoring of instruments consisting of heterogeneous item content. Findings from this study show that Grit-S was best represented by a bi-factor solution. Results indicate that the general grit factor possesses satisfactory score reliability and information, however, the results are not entirely clear or supportive of subscale scoring for either consistency of effort subscale or interest. The implications of these findings and future research are discussed.

This study's purpose was to investigate the importance of mentoring functions and behaviors for lifelong career development as perceived by protégés. The population included individuals in middle to late adulthood (age 40 years and older) who reported they had been a protégé in at least one mentoring association perceived as beneficial to their lifelong career development; and were either employed or had been employed as a middle manager, senior manager, C-level executive, business owner, or member of a profession. The sample was obtained using a chain-sample method; 67 Ambassadors completed an online survey and each invited 10 contacts to complete the survey. The final number of respondents was 503; of these, 456 reported being a protégé. Data were collected using the Perceptions of Workplace Mentoring Behaviors (PWMB) scale, a modification of Noe's (1988) Mentoring Functions Scale. The online survey included the PWMB scale items plus questions designed to engage the respondent's autobiographical memory and questions regarding respondent and mentoring association characteristics. The PWMB scale included seven new items, posited by the expert panel, enhancing the teaching aspect of mentoring. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted comparing four tenable models for the PWMB scale. The 8-factor model, which was essentially the protégé's view of Kram's (1985) mentoring functions model and included the seven newly developed items, exhibited the best fit of the four possible models. Results indicated that protégés perceived three factors from the Psychosocial category (Role Model, Acceptance-and-Confirmation, and Relationship Fundamentals) as most important to their lifelong career development. Effective Development Opportunities was perceived as the most important factor from the Career category. Professional Issue Counseling from the Psychosocial category was perceived as the least important factor. Significant differences were found for five of six independent variables (protégé gender, mentor gender, dyad, protégé's mentor group, and birth decade) at the item level and for four of six independent variables (protégé gender, dyad, protégé's mentor group, and decade of birth) at the factor level. Implications included designing mentoring programs that provide opportunities for mentors and protégés to develop relationships rather than directly assigning protégés to mentors.

The Study Anxiety Inventory (SAI), consisting of the factors of worry and emotionality, was developed to measure college students' self-reported levels of anxiety while studying for an exam. Data from 2002 undergraduate students from four colleges (Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Business, and Education) at a southeastern state university were used to evaluate the validity of the scores from the 16-item Study Anxiety Inventory. Results of confirmatory factor analyses for the two factor model, conducted separately for each college, indicated marginally acceptable fit for the data (median fit measures across the four colleges: CFI =.915, SRMR=.049, RMSEA=.098), a pattern that was repeated for both males and females. Multigroup CFA was used to evaluate the factorial invariance of the SAI across gender within each college. Factor loadings (i.e., pattern coefficients) for the SAI items were not found to be significantly different between males and females (p > .05). Error variances for four items were found to be significantly different between males and females, indicating that there may be some difference in scale reliability by gender. Factor covariances were invariant for all four colleges (p > .05) and factor variances were invariant for all but the worry component for the College of Arts and Sciences where females had significantly greater variability on the worry factor. As was hypothesized, the SAI scores were positively correlated with scores on measures of test anxiety (median r=.74), trait anxiety (median r=.46), active procrastination (median r=.23), and passive procrastination (median r=.29), but negatively correlated with trait curiosity (median r=-.19). Contrary to what was hypothesized, no relationship was demonstrated between study anxiety and study skills and habits (median r=-.03). The nomological network was extended in this study by examining relationships between scores obtained from students on the SAI and measures of active and passive procrastination. This is the first study that systematically examines the factorial invariance of the SAI by gender, which is important because previous research using the SAI has shown men's scores to be consistently lower than women's scores. The results obtained in the current study provide support for gender invariance in a nonclinical population in the situation specific level of anxiety while studying. There is sufficient evidence of validity and reliability (median Cronbach alphas for males and females for the total score were .978 and .980, for worry were .968 and .973, and for emotionality were .947 and .951, respectively) that a researcher should feel confident that the SAI is a psychometrically sound research tool that holds up fairly well across a number of different types of students and that making mean comparisons on the SAI by gender is acceptable.