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Affective Assessments (affective + assessment)
Selected AbstractsThe development and application of affective assessment in an upper-level cell biology courseJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 8 2007Elizabeth Kitchen Abstract This study exemplifies how faculty members can develop instruments to assess affective responses of students to the specific features of the courses they teach. Means for assessing three types of affective responses are demonstrated: (a) student attitudes towards courses with differing instructional objectives and methodologies, (b) student self-efficacy (confidence) in completing tasks common to practicing experts, and (c) interests in subject-specific topics and associated intellectual skills. The iterative processes used in refining the instruments and performing the statistical analyses of their effectiveness are detailed. An analysis of data obtained using these instruments is also included. Positive attitudes towards courses emphasizing analytical thinking increased significantly over the course of a 14-week semester, as did the measures of self-efficacy. Despite the rigorous analytical nature of the course experience, the initial strong interest in cell biology topics and higher order thinking skills remained unchanged. There were no significant differences based on gender in any of the affective measures. We discuss the apparent dichotomy, revealed in these assessments, between students' idealistic, academic attitudes towards the course's effectiveness and their opinions of its effects on them personally. We conclude by reporting how insights garnered both from these formal assessments and from anecdotal communications have prompted experimental modifications in the design and conduct of the course. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 1057,1087, 2007 [source] Recruiting and Retaining Students in Family and Consumer Sciences Education: El Puente Para El Futuro (The Bridge to the Future) Mentoring ProjectFAMILY & CONSUMER SCIENCES RESEARCH JOURNAL, Issue 1 2006Wanda A. Eastman El Puente Para El Futuro (The Bridge to the Future) mentoring project was undertaken to meet the need for family and consumer sciences (FCS) teachers. The centerpiece of the project was one-on-one mentoring relationships between family and consumer sciences education (FCSE) mentor students from New Mexico State University and mentee students from the Education Program at Dona Ana Branch Community College. During fall 2003, the researchers developed curricula, recruitment materials, and assessment instruments. Seven mentor-mentee pairs completed the project during spring 2004. The researchers planned monthly structured events, and each mentor-mentee pair arranged for unstructured events. Valid and reliable cognitive and affective assessments were administered to participants at the beginning and end of the project. Mentees had significant increases in both cognitive and affective mean scores regarding teaching FCS. This mentoring model is recommended to FCSE educators and others working in recruitment settings. [source] A randomized, two-year study of the efficacy of cognitive intervention on elderly people: the Donostia Longitudinal StudyINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY, Issue 1 2008Cristina Buiza Abstract Background Research on non-pharmacological therapies (cognitive rehabilitation) in old age has been very limited, and most has not considered the effect of interventions of this type over extended periods of time. Objective To investigate a new cognitive therapy in a randomized study with elderly people who did not suffer cognitive impairment. Methods The efficacy of this therapy was evaluated by means of post-hoc analysis of 238 people using biomedical, cognitive, behavioural, quality of life (QoL), subjective memory, and affective assessments. Results Scores for learning potential and different types of memory (working memory, immediate memory, logic memory) for the treatment group improved significantly relative to the untreated controls. Conclusions The most significant finding in this study was that learning potential continued at enhanced levels in trained subjects over an intervention period lasting two years, thereby increasing rehabilitation potential and contributing to successful ageing. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Estimation of Item Response Theory Parameters in the Presence of Missing DataJOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT, Issue 3 2008Holmes Finch Missing data are a common problem in a variety of measurement settings, including responses to items on both cognitive and affective assessments. Researchers have shown that such missing data may create problems in the estimation of item difficulty parameters in the Item Response Theory (IRT) context, particularly if they are ignored. At the same time, a number of data imputation methods have been developed outside of the IRT framework and been shown to be effective tools for dealing with missing data. The current study takes several of these methods that have been found to be useful in other contexts and investigates their performance with IRT data that contain missing values. Through a simulation study, it is shown that these methods exhibit varying degrees of effectiveness in terms of imputing data that in turn produce accurate sample estimates of item difficulty and discrimination parameters. [source] Leadership quality and follower affect: A study of U.S. presidential candidatesJOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES, Issue 4 2008M. David Albritton Using the tripartite model of attitude structure as a conceptual basis, this article investigates voter attitudes toward presidential candidates, including cognitive and affective assessments of these leaders as well as behavioral intentions and voting behavior. Data collected from the seven most recent U.S. presidential elections were used to compare Democratic and Republican Party candidates who were successful in securing votes to those who were unsuccessful. Here, follower perceptions of leader intelligence, feelings of pride and hope, as well as feelings of fear and anger were found to be statistically different between the two groups. Additionally, regression analysis using follower assessments of candidates' leadership quality, as dependent upon certain perceptual traits of that leader, are presented. Candidates perceived to be higher in intelligence, considered to possess stronger degrees of inspirational quality, and judged more "likeable," in terms of generating stronger degrees of positive follower affect and lower degrees of negative follower affect, are considered better quality leaders. Followers' perceptions of these traits are found to be key predictors of whether that follower will consider a leader to be of high quality. [source] | ||||||||||