Large-scale assessments of children and youth physical activity (PA) behaviors are regularly conducted in school settings. In addition to assessing actual fitness, the FITNESSGRAM® assesses self-reported PA behaviors for aerobic, strengthening, and flexibility activity within the past 7 days. The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the three PA items. Participants included 1010 students in grades three through twelve and were either tested under a teacher – teacher condition, an expert - expert condition, a teacher – expert condition, or a trained teacher – expert condition. Comparisons of the responses to the PA items indicated adequate reliability for teachers, but the reliability improved with training. Likewise, the validities for teachers are moderate to fair; however, they improved when teachers received additional training.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-57).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 68 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-62).

published_or_final_version / Behavioral Health / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Bullying is a behaviour that is becoming increasingly common in schools and there is evidence to suggest it can begin during the kindergarten years. However, there is a gap in the research for bullying among children aged under 7 years. The focus of the present study was on school-aged children aged 5 to 7 years. The aim was to determine whether children in this age group could reliably report on their own experiences of bullying and if so, could a self-report interview measure be developed to reliably identify bullying in this age group. The results indicate that the children in this study were able to report bullying experiences and how this made them feel, but they were not able to report on the timing, nor the frequency of the bullying. This could be due to factors such as their age and cognitive development and the school’s pro-active anti-bullying policy. Future research could further develop this self-report measure and pilot with a larger population in the hope that it could be used as a regular screening tool for 5- to 7-year-old children in schools.

Mindfulness is increasingly recognized as an important phenomenon in both clinical and empirical domains, though debate regarding the exact definition of mindfulness continues. Selfreport mindfulness measures have begun to appear, which is important as each measure represents an independent attempt to conceptualize mindfulness. Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, and Toney (2006) recently identified five facets of mindfulness (observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging, and nonreactivity) and developed the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) to assess them. They also provided preliminary evidence that the five facets were aspects of an overall mindfulness construct, demonstrated support for the convergent and discriminant validity of total mindfulness and its facets, and provided evidence to support the utility of the facets in understanding the relationships of mindfulness with other constructs. Their research raised interesting questions, especially as findings for the observe facet were not entirely consistent with current conceptualizations of mindfulness. The current study attempted to build upon and clarify the results of Baer et al. (2006) by examining the factor structure of mindfulness and the patterns of relationships between total mindfulness and its facets with already examined and newly investigated (absorption, rumination, reflection, and psychological well-being) constructs in a sample of individuals with meditation experience. One hundred ninety-three individuals completed packets including multiple self-report measures. Results indicated that a model conceptualizing the five facets as aspects of an overall mindfulness construct had good fit to the data, that the observe facet was almost entirely consistent with the conceptualization of mindfulness, that total mindfulness and its facets were related to previously examined constructs in a manner overall consistent with Baer et al. (2006), though some important differences in the strength of facet relationships with other constructs emerged, that the facets related to newly investigated constructs in conceptually consistent ways, and that mindfulness and its facets are strongly related to psychological well-being. These results support the current conceptualization of mindfulness and the adaptive nature of mindfulness in individuals with meditation experience.

Neuropsychologists are increasingly asked to determine whether a patient may be malingering symptoms of a mild closed head injury. This issue is particularly salient within the context of civil litigation and the potential of significant financial awards. Patients' performances on neuropsychological tests have historically been assumed to accurately reflect their abilities and deficits. Optimal motivation and performance cannot be automatically assumed within the context of litigation. Moreover, comorbid anxiety and depression are frequently present in head injury patients and adversely affect the patient's performance.The frequent comorbidity of psychiatric and medical symptoms complicates interpretation of a patient's neuropsychological evaluation whether or not the patient is involved in litigation. This comorbidity may result in an inaccurate diagnosis, thus delaying treatment potentially causing greater harm to the patient.The present study was conducted to expand previous research that discriminated between simulated malingered and neurological patient responses to a neuropsychological self-report inventory. Additionally, the study investigated the, utility of the Neuropsychological Symptom Inventory in discriminating between simulated medical, psychiatric and malingered patient responses. Results indicated that the NSI was able to discriminate malingered responses from medical and psychiatric patient responses. However, applying a lie scale derived from previous research with the NSI did not allow discrimination between the malingered group and the psychiatric patients. Use of a factor solution derived from earlier research may offer not only greater prediction in detection of malingerers, but also evaluation of symptom profiles of medical and psychiatric patients. The NSI may provide an efficient screen for exaggerated symptoms as well as an indication of the level of general neuropsychological functioning of the patient when included in a neuropsychological evaluation. / Department of Educational Psychology

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether an individual's self-esteem would effect the amount of effort that person expected to expend in a task performing situation with an evaluator. Two social psychological principles of an individual's self-perception, the self-esteem and self-consistency theories, were the theoretical concepts upon which this study was based.The 403 subjects were undergraduates at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. The study was conducted during the winter of 1980.Subjects were administered two self-report questionnaires measuring self-esteem and locus of control. High and low self-esteem groups, each containing 70 subjects, were selected for participation in phase two.Prior to meeting with the evaluator, each subject was given a verbal cue regarding the evaluator's demandingness. Each subject was asked to determine the number of practice problems to be done in presentation for a task. The number of problems chosen constituted the amount of effort the individual expected to expend, or the dependent variable.Using a univariate analysis of variance, the data analysis showed a statistically significant interaction between the self-esteem and evaluator demandingness factors for the male sample. Four null sub-hypotheses were also rejected for the male sample. Due to lack of homogeneity of variance in the female sample, four revised null subhypotheses were tested using a non-parametric procedure, the KruskalWallis Rank Sums. Each of these sub-hypotheses was rejected for the female sample.As a result of the data analysis, the following conclusions were made: (1) High self-esteem individuals expected to expend more effort with a difficult-to-please evaluator than with an easy-to-please evaluator, and (2) conversely, low self-esteem individuals expected to expend more effort with an easy-to-please evaluator than with a difficult-to-please evaluator. The findings of this study support self-esteem theory.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1975. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 451-492).

Discordance between weekday and weekend sleep schedules is common (Bonnet & Arand, 1995; Breslau, Roth, Rosenthal, & Andreski, 1997; Machado, Varella, & Andrade, 1998; Strauch & Meier, 1988; Tsai & Li, 2004). Brief retrospective self-report measures are essential for epidemiological research studies (Moul, Hall, Pilkonis, & Buysse, 2004), but self-reports are prone to error in recall, and the greater the variability in nightly sleep, the less reliable are retrospective reports (Babkoff, Weller, & Lavidor, 1996). More accurate self-report responses may be possible if measures prompt participants to consider variations in sleep schedules that are consistent (i.e., weekday and weekend sleep schedules). The current study experimentally examined whether Bifurcated (Weekday and Weekend) retrospective assessments of sleep are more accurate than Unitary (Past Week) assessments. Participants were randomly assigned to complete one of the two versions (Bifurcated vs. Unitary) of the Sleep Questionnaire. One hundred and thirty-one participants were included in the analyses. Results of a a series of analyses demonstrated that the Bifurcated version of the Sleep Questionnaire provided more accurate and less variable estimates of total sleep time than the Unitary version of the Sleep Questionnaire. Differences between the versions of the Sleep Questionnaire for other sleep variables were less consistent, and the increased length of the Bifurcated version of the Sleep Questionnaire may have contributed to increased missing and unusable data in this group. Overall, the findings suggest that in both research and clinical work, retrospective measures that examine weekday and weekend sleep separately may offer advantages over retrospective measures that do not differentiate between weekday and weekend sleep.