Virtual-reality neuropsychological tests offer a novel way to assess real-life executive functioning within the context of standardized test conditions whilst maximizing ecological validity. Given the limited empirical evidence base for many of these virtual-reality tests, the current study aimed to further examine the relative ecological validity, sensitivity to brain-injury and diagnostic accuracy of the virtual-reality based Jansari assessment of Executive Functions (JEF). To do this, the test was compared to seven standard tests of executive function, in a New Zealand sample of 27 brain-injured and 28 non brain-injured participants matched for age, gender and education. The JEF’s ecological validity was supported, with JEF total percent scores exhibiting large correlations with participants’ independently reported levels of everyday functioning, as measured by the Dysexecutive Questionnaire: Independent-Rater (DEX-IR) and Patient Competency Rating Scale-Relative (PCRS-R) (both rs = 0.606, p < 0.001). Compared to the standard executive function test variables included in the current study, the JEF’s associations with the everyday functioning measures were the largest, but only significantly larger than the respective correlations of some standard executive function test variables. These results indicated that the JEF is trending towards being relatively more ecologically valid than most of the standard executive function tests included in the study. The JEF also exhibited good sensitivity to brain-injury and diagnostic accuracy for discriminating brain-injured from non brain-injured participants, which was generally consistent with most of the standard tests, but only significantly better than some. These results provide empirical support for the JEF’s clinical utility, particularly in the assessment of brain-injured persons’ functional abilities. It also suggests that both virtual-reality and standard executive function tests have a place in the routine neuropsychological test batteries used to assess brain-injured persons.

When selecting applicants for professions with job descriptions involving complex human interaction, identifying suitable candidates is essential. This strongly applies in police selection, because police officers must act appropriately at all times, deal with difficult and sometimes dangerous work situations, and come into contact with people who are in highly emotional states, such as anxiety, fear, excitement, and shock. However, suitability is a broad and vague concept that cannot be even defined without understanding the value of various personal skills and qualities for specific duties, ways that such skills are manifested during life as an officer (potentially both on- and off-duty), and appropriate ways to assess them. The overall aim of this thesis was to explore the personal skills and qualities that are relevant to suitability for the police profession with a special focus on the concept of empathy, and to investigate how it can be conceptualized and measured in the context of selection. Two of the four studies focused on different perspectives regarding the personal skills and qualities of a good police officer, while the other two focused on theoretical aspects and practical measurement of empathy. Mixed methods were used, in acknowledgement of the value of using different forms of data collection, material, and analytical methods to achieve valid information. The results and findings support several of the personal skills and qualities that have been identified in previous research and also can be found as criteria in police selection. Empathy should be considered in the selection process, but it is also important to ensure that there is an alignment between the definition of the concept and practical outcomes in police work. The findings indicate that empathy could be conceptualized in a relevant way using a social cognitive neuroscience (SCN) approach. In particular, a modified, Swedish 4-factor version of the Empathy Assessment Index (based on recent theoretical advances in SCN) appears to have considerable potential for further development. Future studies will focus on areas identified as requiring further research, such as the development of this instrument by adding complementary measures focusing on manifestations of empathy and other relevant qualities in actual work-related situations. Other aspects that require further attention include the definition, assessment, and impact of social desirability in selection contexts.

No description available.

Institutions of higher learning are currently faced with the crisis of finding appropriate criteria for undergraduate admission. This concern has been sparked by the fact that matriculation grades are no longer seen as an accurate reflection of students' academic potential. As tertiary education is becoming more expensive, it is therefore becoming more and more important to select only students who have a realistic chance of being successful in their studies. The main aim of this study is to validate the Situation Specific Evaluation Expert (SPEEX) as a predictor of academic success of first year students of Mechanical Engineering at the Vaal Triangle Technikon. The design used in this study is a non-experimental correlational design. This design was selected because the investigation of this study is aimed at determining the presence or absence of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables without specific reference to causality. The sample of this study consisted of a total of 140 mechanical engineering student at the Vaal Triangle Technikon. This sample was the total number of students from the Mechanical Engineering department who enrolled for mechanical engineering courses for the year 2000. The sample consisted of 94% males and females 6% females. Subject matter experts from industry as well as those involved in the training of Mechanical Engineering at the Vaal Triangle Technikon selected competencies, which were hypothesised to be indicative of a potentially successful student. Based on the selected competencies the assessment battery was compiled with the selected indices being considered as predictor variables. A multiple regression analysis was performed on data in order to establish the predictive validity of the assessment battery. SPEEX 2502 (Language proficiency) consistently showed a positive correlation on the prediction of academic success. / Thesis (MA (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

The overall aim of this thesis was to develop and validate a self-report instrument for perceived driver competence. The thesis includes six papers and a summary. All papers focus on perceived driver competence from a measurement perspective; that is, how to develop an instrument for perceived driver competence and how to use and interpret the scores from the instrument in a reliable and valid manner. Study I reviews how perceived driver competence has been measured in other studies and discusses these methods from a measurement perspective. Most studies have examined perceived driver competence by asking drivers to compare their own skill to that of the average driver. That method is problematic, since it is not possible to determine if drivers are overconfident or not, when empirical information of their own skills is missing. In order to examine if drivers overestimate their skills or not, perceived driver competence should be compared with actual driving performance. Study II reports on the development and psychometric evaluation of a self-report instrument for perceived driver competence - the Self-Efficacy Scale for Driver Competence (SSDC). The findings provides support for construct validity, as the SSDC demonstrated sound psychometric properties and as the internal structure of the SSDC corresponded to the theoretical model used as a basis for instrument development. In study III, the psychometric properties of the SSDC were further examined using an item response theory (IRT) model. The findings confirmed the results indicated by the classical analyses in Study II. Additional information was provided by the IRT analyses, as it was indicated that the scale would benefit from fewer scale points or by putting labels on each scale point. In study IV, Swedish and Finnish candidates’ self-assessment accuracy was examined by comparing candidates’ scores on the SSDC and a similar instrument for self-assessment of driving skill used in Finland, with driving test performance. Unlike previous studies, in which drivers compared their perceived skills to that of the average driver, a relatively large proportion made a realistic assessment of their own skills. In addition, in contrast to previous studies, no gender differences were found. These results were also confirmed in study V, where the results from the Finnish instrument for self-assessment of driving skill were compared with the results from a similar instrument used in the Netherlands. Study VI further examined the construct validity of a revised version of the SSDC, combining qualitative and quantitative sources of evidence. There was a strong relationship between the SSDC and an instrument for self-assessment of driving skills, providing support for convergent validity. No relationship was found between the SSDC and driving test performance. Explanations of the lack of relationship were provided from semi-structured interviews, as they indicated that confidence in performing different tasks in the test are different from being confident of passing the test, and that the candidates are familiar neither with assessing their own skills nor with the requirements for passing the test. In conclusion, the results from this thesis indicated that the choice of methods for assessing perceived driver competence as well as the quality of these methods affect the validity. The results provided support for different aspects of construct validity of the SSDC. Moreover, the findings illustrated the benefits of combining different methods in test validation, as each method contributed information about the validity of the SSDC. The studies in this thesis mainly examined internal and external aspects of construct validity. Future studies should examine procedural validity of the SSDC.

Differential item functioning (DIF) can occur across age, gender, ethnic, and/or linguistic groups of examinee populations. Therefore, whenever there is more than one group of examinees involved in a test, a possibility of DIF exists. It is important to detect items with DIF with accurate and powerful statistical methods. While finding a proper DIP method is essential, until now most of the available methods have been dominated by applications to large scale testing contexts. Since the early 1990s, Ramsay has developed a nonparametric item response methodology and computer software, TestGraf (Ramsay, 2000). The nonparametric item response theory (IRT) method requires fewer examinees and items than other item response theory methods and was also designed to detect DIF. However, nonparametric IRT's Type I error rate for DIF detection had not been investigated. The present study investigated the Type I error rate of the nonparametric IRT DIF detection method, when applied to moderate-to-small-scale testing context wherein there were 500 or fewer examinees in a group. In addition, the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) DIF detection method was included. A three-parameter logistic item response model was used to generate data for the two population groups. Each population corresponded to a test of 40 items. Item statistics for the first 34 non-DIF items were randomly chosen from the mathematics test of the 1999 TEVISS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study) for grade eight, whereas item statistics for the last six studied items were adopted from the DIF items used in the study of Muniz, Hambleton, and Xing (2001). These six items were the focus of this study.

There are formulated validity and transference of cooperation methods and cooperation buildup with a view to reach positive changes in education of learners with special needs. The methods promoting the cooperation of Lithuanian and foreign authors were analyzed in this work. The analysis of already made-up practical cooperation pattern was done as well. Experimentally when building up the cooperation inside and outside validity of made-up cooperation pattern was reviewed and evaluated. The research hypothesis, certifying the efficiency of the made-up cooperation pattern when building up the cooperation in practice, formulated by the author has been confirmed. The pattern allows initiating the changes of cooperation and the changes to meet the special educational needs. By the initiative of the professionals and educators following the pragmatic viewpoint the cooperation pattern would stimulate parents to participate in the educational process of educating the learners with special needs. When transferring practical pattern of cooperation into another educational environment the resistance of educational environment against the transference might arise.

Regular physical activity can help prevent chronic conditions and it is positively linked to health-related quality of life (United States Department of Health and Human Services [USDHHS], 2000). Unfortunately, many older adults do not engage in leisure time activity (USDHHS, 2000); making it important to design and test physical activity interventions for this population. The purpose of this dissertation was to review the external validity of theory-based physical activity interventions and to examine the efficacy of a mail-based physical activity intervention. The review included 54 theory-based interventions and overall the studies focused on internal rather than external validity. The hypotheses of the experimental study were that the psychological mediators and physical activity participation would significantly increase among the treatment group as compared to the control group, and that the changes in the mediators would be related to the changes in activity levels. The intervention included 4 weekly stage-matched packages targeting population specific physical activity beliefs (Antikainen et al., 2009) and weekly phone calls to reassess stages of change. Physical activity participation, stages of change, and theory of planned behavior constructs were assessed at baseline and follow-up. Differences in activity levels and theory-based constructs were assessed with repeated measures mixed analysis of variance. Stage of change progression was examined with chi-square analysis. Measured variable path analysis was used to determine associations between the theory constructs, stages of change, and physical activity participation. The participants were 55 older adults, ages 54 to 96 years. Most of the participants were female, Black, and reported low levels of education and income. The treatment group reported statistically significantly greater physical activity after the intervention than the control group that reported lower levels of activity at follow-up. Although not statistically significant, there was a trend in SOC progression after the intervention in the treatment group. Finally, the integrated model was found to have a good fit at follow-up and perceived behavioral control emerged as a significant predictor of physical activity. This research provides important information for the design of physical activity interventions based upon the integrated framework for translation to community-based organizations.

No description available.

Up to date, it is unclear how Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) models perform in terms of forecasting (external) real world aggregate shop data. In this contribution, we measure the performance of a Latent Class CBC model - not with an experimental holdout sample - but with aggregate real world scanning data. We find that the CBC model does not accurately predict real world market shares. In order to improve the forecasting performance, we propose a correction scheme based on external scanner data. Our analysis based on 8 brands shows that the use of the proposed correction vector improves the performance measure considerably. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"