Educational Measurement
Year:2018 | Volume:8 | Issue:32 |Papers Count:9

The main goal of this research was to apply the multi-level in determining the role of metacognitive components associated with drug abuse among adolescents of Kerman Province. The method used in this research was correlation type. In order to conduct this research 1000 school students of Kerman Province have been selected by using multistage cluster sampling method. For data collection in this research, ZARGAR drug addiction preparation Questionnaire and Wels’ s Metacognitive Questionnaire (MCQ30) have been used. The results of multi-level approach using One-way random effects Anova showed that the four components (positive beliefs about worries, negative beliefs about worries, low cognitive trust and cognitive self-awareness) explained about 49% of the variance of addiction tendency at school level. Moreover, the random intercept model explained 12% of the student-level variance of drug abuse tendency. Here, the significance of qi-square with the value of 37. 983 at the significant level (P <0. 0001) reflects the significant change of the null model and model 1. In response to the question that how much the relationship between the tendency to drug abuse and student-level components is similar among schools, a comprehensive model with both student-level and school-level variables (model 2) was used. In model 2, the results showed that at the school level, the mean of positive beliefs and cognitive self-awareness about drug abuse tendency have a significant relationship, but the mean of cognitive trust and negative beliefs has not a significant relationship with the tendency to drug abuse. At the students level, there is a significant relationship between cognitive trust and negative beliefs with drug abuse tendency (P <0. 01). In total, it can be said that for variables related to samples with a nesting nature, it is necessary to use all levels in data analysis.

The purpose of this study was to determine the basic skills of reading and comprehension and analyze the test questions, and finally, strengths and weaknesses of subjects through cognitive diagnostic assessment models were fitted with retrofit analysis. The data examined in this study included responses from 3, 000 participants in the graduate entrance examination for English language field, which were selected from among 16044 people randomly. At first, with the help of experts, a matrix Q, consisting of the relationship between 20 questions of reading test with 7 basic skills was formed and then, using the G-DINA model, last analysis was performed. Finally, using a posteriori expected method within the framework of the G-DINA model, probability of domination of every single person on each skill was calculated by CDM package skills in software R, and by determining the cut-off point 0. 6 for dominance, investigated participants in each skill, divided into two dominant and non-dominant groups. The results showed that in each of the skills, most people have not reached to dominance, Although the situation in the SUM skill (Analyzing and evaluating the relative importance of the information contained in the text, by differentiating between the main idea and details) was better than other skills, and about half of those got dominant in the skill. The final result suggests that, in general, the participant's situation in the application of cognitive strategies to achieve the correct answer is unsatisfactory and these strategies must be included in the curriculum of reading skills and comprehension.

The current study was aimed at exploring Differential Item Functioning (DIF) items in Iranian TEFL MA Entrance Exam employing two beneficial and valuable statistical methods: Logistic Regression (LR) and Mantel-Haenszel (MH). Besides, the founded DIF items were gone through a content analysis in order to explore the potential linguistic resources of such biases. To this end, the answer sheets of 2217 female and 735 male examinees in 2015 were analyzed to find items containing DIF. The findings of LR technique determined eight items as DIF containing items. Half of the items were advantageous to the men and the other half of the items favoured women. MH procedure explored eleven items as DIF flagging items. Out of these items, six items favoured male test takers and five items showed tendency toward female test takers. No particular linguistic source for such deviated behaviour of items was proposed through the content analysis of the DIF items.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of using the portfolio evaluating on the motivation and academic achievement of students in the third grade elementary school in the city of Nahavand in the academic year 2012-2013. For this purpose, a sample of 100 individuals (2 girls and 2 boy's classes) was selected randomly in a multi-stage method; then, a class (male and female) as an experimental group and a class (male and female) Was selected as the control group. The experimental groups received a course in a portfolio evaluating, but control groups received standardized measurements. For data collection in pre-test and post-test, Hermann's motivation questionnaire and researcher-made academic achievement test were used. Data analysis using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) for differential scores showed that there is a significant difference between motivation and academic achievement in two groups of measurement and portfolio assessment. That is, students who had received a portfolio assessment had a higher degree of motivation and academic achievement than control groups who received standardized measurements. In addition, the portfolio assessment on the motivation and academic achievement of elementary school-boy students has a significant effect; and on the motivation achievement of female students in the third elementary school has a significant effect, but on the academic achievement of female hasn't a significant effect. Measurement-gender interaction was also significant.

Acceptance and commitment therapy is trying to facilitate a valued living; although, there is not a valid scale for assessment of this concept. The items of questionnaire that are taken from ACT texts and well validated in English; items were translated and afterward three ACT experts checked out formal validation of translated Valuing Questionnaire (VQ). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis made for tow factor (1st factor= progress (in valued living), 2nd factor= obstruction (for valued living)) in student publication (N=502) with one subsample (N=300) for exploratory factor analysis and another (N=202) for confirmatory factor analysis. Results of exploratory factor analysis showed tow factor with 54. 17 percent of whole variance. Indices of CIMIN/df، NFI، CFI، RMSEA used for fit indices, after effect of modification indices respectively 1. 93, 0. 06, 0. 95, 0. 90, 0. 87 were received; as regards proposed model was fit with model of exploratory factor analysis. Also in study of reliability by method of Cronbach's alpha for Progress scale α = 0. 79 and for Obstruction scale α =0. 77 were received that show a good reliability for scales. Valuing Questionnaire (VQ) as a scale for substitution with symptom oriented scales, allow researcher and therapists a rapid, reliable and valid assessment.

A big source of Rational number misconception is the "natural number bias". This term refers to the Interference of natural number knowledge in rational numbers. The research literature points at three main aspects where natural number knowledge are inappropriately Interfered in rational numbers tasks: "density", "operations", and "size". The overall goal of this study was to assess the psychometric properties items of "natural number bias test". To achieve this goal, a comprehensive test was constructed to test 7 and 9 graders’ natural number bias. This test had 62 tasks which administered on 181 secondary school students at Kerman in a pencil-and-paper form. After of pilot administration of test, data was collected and were analyzed by item response theory modeling. Data analyzing by R software has shown acceptably fitting whit dichotomous rash model. After removing 7 Item, the test had high diagnostic value in its purpose. Results showed that a natural number bias could be found on secondary student in all three aspects. The most difficulty was for "density" items and least difficult was for "size" items. "operations" items were scattered across the Rash scale. Most students were in the top questions test scale. Researchers can choose Items for participants based on their ability.

Diagnosing and assessing of psychological maltreatment is a critical and difficult process in clinical and educational psychology, because this phenomenon has numerous negative behavioral and psychological consequences on victims. The aim of present study was investigate psychometric properties of psychological maltreatment inventor. This research was a cross-sectional descriptive study. In this study, 300 patients with major depression disorder attending to Sediq Psychiatry Center in Lorestan Province were selected by convenience sampling in November to February 2013. Data was collected using a demographic questionnaire, Psychological maltreatment Inventory (AMI-24) and child abuse self-report scale. Confirmatory factor analysis in principal component method was used for data analysis. The results showed that psychological maltreatment inventor has sufficiently reliability and validity. Also, factor analysis showed that 23 items and 5 factors were best question for assessing psychological maltreatment. Thus, Considering that psychological maltreatment inventor is an appropriate instrument for assessing and measuring psychological maltreatment during childhood are recommended using of this inventory for epidemiological research on psychological maltreatment during childhood and clinical screening.

The purpose of this study is to study the preferences of student selection based on Hierarchical Analytic Method (AHP) among high school students. The data were collected by a pair of paired questionnaires from among 30 sampled educators. The validity of the questionnaire was based on the opinions of experts and university professors. To determine the theoretical framework of the research, the views of sociologists and educators have been used. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and for each pair of comparisons, each of the criteria of the school's factors, personal abilities and interests, future job opportunities, parents' opinion and social factors with the courses in high schools, including mathematics and physics, Empirical sciences, humanities, Technical and professional, and work and knowledge two to two are compared. The final results show that the fields of experimental science, mathematics and physics, technical and vocational, work and knowledge and humanities have Preference and Priority to choose and continue education. Also, the result of the paired comparison of the criteria and factors suggests that the person's ability and interests were 46% in the first priority, then the future job opportunities with 22% and the school's factors, social factors and, ultimately, the parent's views with 11, 4% and 4% respectively are located.

Dimensionality analysis or specify the number of latent traits that affect the data from the implementation of a scale or test and the study of local independency and monotonicity assumptions is of the important presuppositions to apply a item response theory model on a set of data. In this research, after a brief explanation of the local dependency indices and its models, In order to modeling the structure of cognitive abilities based on the data obtained from the implementation of the scale of cognitive abilities on a sample of 1105 students from the 9th grade students of Ahwaz selected by proportional stratified random sampling, after examining the hypothesis local independency through local dependency indices, monotonicity hypothesis and estimation of parameters of two one-dimensional and two-dimensional models and their comparison, The dimensionality of cognitive abilities was determined. The results showed that the dependency model observed between the data is perfectly locally dependent and Comparison of fitness indices of one-dimensional and two-dimensional model of Samejima graded response model showed that the two-dimensional model has better fit to the data than the one-dimensional model. In the following, using the concept of dimensionality factor space, a kind of comparison between the two classical test theories (CTT) and multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) was created and a kind of convergence in the results was obtained. The results showed that the fitness indices of classical theory alone were not able to characterize the structure of cognitive abilities, and methods based on item response theory in this field can be solved. The results of dimensionality analysis showed that the structure of cognitive abilities was two-dimensional; the first dimension of non-social cognition and the second dimension of social cognition were named and it was observed that these results converge with the results in the field of neuroscience.