The Katz-Francis scale of attitude toward Judaism : internal consistency reliability and construct validity among female undergraduate students in Israel

The Katz-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism was developed to extend to the Jewish community a growing body of international research concerned to map the correlates, antecedents, and consequences of individual differences in attitude toward religion as assessed by the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity. The internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the Katz-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism were supported by data provided by 284 Hebrew-speaking female undergraduate students attending Bar-Ilan University. This instrument is commended for application in further research

Determinants of Student Preferences for Teaching Behaviors in the Ambulatory Setting

The purpose of this research was to examine the influence of demographic and cultural factors on learner preferences for teaching behaviors in the ambulatory internal medicine clerkship. To that end, 50 medical students at each of four US institutions (BU, Tufts, UMass, and Yale) and 50 British medical students at the University of Cambridge were invited to complete a survey on teaching behaviors in the ambulatory setting, evaluating items on two scales: one rating the behavior\u27s importance, and one rating how highly the student recommended the behavior. Behaviors rated highly on both scales were considered valued by the student. Students\u27 values of the teaching behaviors were compared by gender, race/ethnicity, age, institution, and country, with 15% maximum difference among groups and p-value \u3c0.05 conferring significant value difference, 10-15% maximum difference with p-value \u3c0.05 near-significant and 15% maximum difference with p ≥0.05 deemed notable. The aggregate US response rate to the survey was 82%, while the British response rate was 46%. Among four US schools, response rates varied from 64% to 98%. Significant differences were seen among groups of medical students in their values of ambulatory teaching behaviors, and distinct patterns emerged for gender, race, age, school, and country. Female students valued patient communication behaviors more than male students. Under-represented minority students valued orientation to the practice, patient care responsibility, and comfortable learning environment more than did white and Asian students. Older students valued give-and-take discussion with preceptors more than did younger students. Among the 4 medical schools, Yale students most valued a preceptor who delegated responsibility for patient care and responded to student needs, and least valued a preceptor who asked the student\u27s probing questions. UMass students most valued patient autonomy. British medical students were less interested in functioning independently and more interested in being observed than the American students, and also placed less value on patient privacy. Differences among student groups raise important questions about causes and consequences of these discordant values in the ambulatory setting. The variability among medical schools and between countries provides novel evidence for limits in the applicability of single-institution studies, thus suggesting a new methodological standard for the community of medical education researchers

Voting, Spending, and the Right to Participate

While the law governing the electoral process has changed dramatically in the past decade, one thing has stayed the same: Courts and commentators continue to view voting in elections and spending on elections through distinct constitutional lenses. On the spending side, First Amendment principles guide judicial analysis, and recent decisions have been strongly deregulatory. On the voting side, courts rely on a makeshift equal protection-oriented framework, and they have tended to be more accepting of regulation. Key voting and spending precedents seldom cite each other. Similarly, election law scholars typically address voting and spending in isolation. This Article challenges the prevailing, bifurcated approach to voting and spending law. It maintains that the law’s disparate handling of voting and spending is unjustified. Voting and spending are, at bottom, two methods of participating in the electoral process. Conceiving them as two aspects of a broader right to participate—a right the Supreme Court recently articulated, but did not develop, in McCutcheon v. FEC—offers a principled basis to harmonize voting and spending law and reorient election law discourse