Improving Your Exploratory Factor Analysis for Ordinal Data: A Demonstration Using FACTOR

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) methods are used extensively in the field of assessment and evaluation. Due to EFA’s widespread use, common methods and practices have come under close scrutiny. A substantial body of literature has been compiled highlighting problems with many of the methods and practices used in EFA, and, in response, many guidelines have been proposed with the aim to improve application. Unfortunately, implementing recommended EFA practices has been restricted by the range of options available in commercial statistical packages and, perhaps, due to an absence of clear, practical ‘how-to’ demonstrations. Consequently, this article describes the application of methods recommended to get the most out of your EFA. The article focuses on dealing with the common situation of analysing ordinal data as derived from Likert-type scales. These methods are demonstrated using the free, stand-alone, easy-to-use and powerful EFA package FACTOR (http://psico.fcep.urv.es/utilitats/factor/, Lorenzo-Seva & Ferrando, 2006). The demonstration applies the recommended techniques using an accompanying dataset, based on the Big 5 personality test. The outcomes obtained by the EFA using the recommended procedures through FACTOR are compared to the default techniques currently available in SPSS. Accessed 23,681 times on https://pareonline.net from June 14, 2014 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

Does Community Legal Education Work? Educating English Language Students about Consumer Contracts

Governments, law reform commissions, and legal services have long advocated for the value of increasing public understanding of the law. While many private law firms and public agencies in the justice sector provide legal information and education to their clients and the community, legal aid commissions are statutorily required to do so. Commissions provide Community Legal Education (CLE), legal information, advice, and representation to people who cannot afford private lawyers. CLE can help people address or avoid legal problems. It has the potential to reduce the need for more intensive and costly legal services and minimize the stress associated with legal problems. Yet CLE remains a small part of the justice sector and questions have been raised about its impact and relative value. Insufficient evidence regarding the effectiveness of CLE places uncertainty on its long-term role in the justice sector and may hamper its development. In response to the need to build an evidence base, this article presents the findings of a study that investigated the impact of a CLE program for improving English language students’ knowledge and attitudes of the legal issues associated with buying a car. The findings demonstrate how CLE can change participants’ attitudes and knowledge of the law

Teaching Statistics through Data Investigations in Australian Secondary Schools: An Island-based Pilot Project

Declines in secondary school students’ attitudes towards, and participation in, mathematics and science are cause for concern. In 2012, a report from the Office of the Chief Scientist called for universities and schools to develop partnerships aimed at improving mathematics and science education in schools. Responding to this call, this pilot project used an online simulation of a human population, known as the Island (Bulmer & Haladyn, 2011), to develop innovative activities for teaching statistics through data investigations. The activities were aligned with the Statistics and Probability strand of the Australian Mathematics Curriculum. The Island-based activities aimed to engage students in meaningful and realistic statistical practice and thereby improve their attitudes towards statistics. The resources were piloted in four partnered secondary schools from the northern suburbs of Melbourne in years 8 to 11 mathematics classes. Questionnaire data from students’ attitudes towards statistics before and after completing the project activities were collected from 237 students. The results found statistically significant increases in positive attitudes towards statistics, however, students’ attitudes towards career prospects in statistics were resistant to change and competency significantly declined. This paper discusses the limitations of these findings and the future directions for a national project

An Experimental Study Evaluating Error Management Training for Learning to Operate a Statistical Package in an Introductory Statistics Course: Is Less Guidance More?

Developing the ability to operate a statistical package is a valuable student learning outcome in introductory statistics courses. Despite this, very little is known about the development of this specialised skill. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an Error-management training (EMT) strategy in learning to operate the statistical package SPSS. EMT uses minimal guidance to actively engage students in exploring the task domain and utilises errors made during training as valuable learning opportunities. EMT was compared to a conventional Guided training (GT) strategy which used error-avoidant, step-by-step instructions. A sample of 100 psychology students enrolled in a first year introductory statistics course were randomly allocated to either EMT or GT. Participants completed five fortnightly SPSS training sessions. Prior to the last training session, participants completed a post-training self-assessment task that assessed training transfer. The same self-assessment task was also completed as a follow-up in semester two. After controlling for covariates, the results of this study found no statistically significant difference between the training conditions on measures of training transfer. While a number of limitations hindered a conclusive result, issues and challenges discussed in this study provide valuable lessons for future research in this area

An Experimental Study Comparing Two Different Training Strategies on how to use Statistical Packages in an Introductory Statistics Course

Statistics education reform advocated the use of statistical software packages, such as SPSS, Minitab, and R, in introductory statistics courses. However, little research has focused on finding effective methods of training students how to use these packages. This experimental study evaluated the effectiveness of two different training strategies. A sample of 100 first year psychology students were randomly allocated to either a Guided training (GT) strategy or an error management training (EMT) strategy. GT consisted of step-by-step instructions that aimed to explicitly direct participants through training to use the statistical package SPSS. EMT avoided step-by-step instructions, instead focusing on minimal instruction which aimed to engage participants in actively exploring the statistical package. In EMT, errors were viewed as beneficial to training as they help develop a deeper understanding of SPSS. Participants completed five statistical package training sessions across the semester. Following four of these training sessions, participants completed self-assessment tasks that measured training transfer performance. After controlling for statistical knowledge and self-assessment compliance, the results of the study indicated no statistically significant differences between the two training strategies. However, this conclusion must be interpreted with caution due to a number of study imitations which are discussed in this article

Risk of recurrence after venous thromboembolism in men and women: patient level meta-analysis

Objective To determine the effect of sex on the risk of recurrent venous thromboembolism in all patients and in patients with venous thromboembolism that was unprovoked or provoked (by non-hormonal factors)

Crystallographic and cellular characterisation of two mechanisms stabilising the native fold of α1-Antitrypsin: implications for disease and drug design

The common Z mutant (Glu342Lys) of α1-antitrypsin results in the formation of polymers that are retained within hepatocytes. This causes liver disease whilst the plasma deficiency of an important proteinase inhibitor predisposes to emphysema. The Thr114Phe and Gly117Phe mutations border a surface cavity identified as a target for rational drug design. These mutations preserve inhibitory activity but reduce the polymerisation of wild-type native α1-antitrypsin in vitro and increase secretion in a Xenopus oocyte model of disease. To understand these effects, we have crystallised both mutants and solved their structures. The 2.2 Å structure of Thr114Phe α1-antitrypsin demonstrates that the effects of the mutation are mediated entirely by well-defined partial cavity blockade and allows in silico screening of fragments capable of mimicking the effects of the mutation. The Gly117Phe mutation operates differently, repacking aromatic side chains in the helix F–β-sheet A interface to induce a half-turn downward shift of the adjacent F helix. We have further characterised the effects of these two mutations in combination with the Z mutation in a eukaryotic cell model of disease. Both mutations increase the secretion of Z α1-antitrypsin in the native conformation, but the double mutants remain more polymerogenic than the wild-type (M) protein. Taken together, these data support different mechanisms by which the Thr114Phe and Gly117Phe mutations stabilise the native fold of α1-antitrypsin and increase secretion of monomeric protein in cell models of disease

The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III

The third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) took data from 2008 to 2014 using the original SDSS wide-field imager, the original and an upgraded multi-object fiber-fed optical spectrograph, a new near-infrared high-resolution spectrograph, and a novel optical interferometer. All of the data from SDSS-III are now made public. In particular, this paper describes Data Release 11 (DR11) including all data acquired through 2013 July, and Data Release 12 (DR12) adding data acquired through 2014 July (including all data included in previous data releases), marking the end of SDSS-III observing. Relative to our previous public release (DR10), DR12 adds one million new spectra of galaxies and quasars from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) over an additional 3000 deg2 of sky, more than triples the number of H-band spectra of stars as part of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), and includes repeated accurate radial velocity measurements of 5500 stars from the Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey (MARVELS). The APOGEE outputs now include the measured abundances of 15 different elements for each star. In total, SDSS-III added 5200 deg2 of ugriz imaging; 155,520 spectra of 138,099 stars as part of the Sloan Exploration of Galactic Understanding and Evolution 2 (SEGUE-2) survey; 2,497,484 BOSS spectra of 1,372,737 galaxies, 294,512 quasars, and 247,216 stars over 9376 deg2; 618,080 APOGEE spectra of 156,593 stars; and 197,040 MARVELS spectra of 5513 stars. Since its first light in 1998, SDSS has imaged over 1/3 of the Celestial sphere in five bands and obtained over five million astronomical spectra. \ua9 2015. The American Astronomical Society