A new method to characterize the degree of fire damage to gypsum wallboard is introduced, implemented, and tested to determine the efficacy of its application among novices. The method was evaluated by comparing degree of fire damage assessments of novices with and without the method. Thirty-nine "novice" raters assessed damage to a gypsum wallboard surface, completing 66 ratings, first without...

Research shows recruiters infer dispositional characteristics from job applicants’ resumes and use these inferences in evaluating applicants’ employability. However, the reliability and validity of these inferences have not been empirically tested. Using data collected from 244 recruiters, we found low levels of estimated interrater reliability when they reviewed entry-level applicants’ resumes...

Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) as a performance-based assessment method is a well established student assessment tool. Its popularity in the assessment of clinical competence is well documented and prominent in situations where reliability and content validity are fundamental. In this paper, we describe the implementation of OSCE in the Department of Nursing Sciences; Universi...

The movement to use empirically supported treatments has increased the need for researchers and supervisors to evaluate therapists' adherence to and the quality with which they implement those interventions. Few empirically supported approaches exist for providing these types of evaluations. This is also true for motivational interviewing, an empirically supported intervention important in the ...

The authors present a new transcript-based method for the assessment of therapeutic alliance ruptures and resolutions in psychotherapy-the Collaborative Interaction Scale (CIS)-and discuss the structure and theoretical background of the scale and the rating procedure. To assess interrater reliability, three raters independently evaluated 32 psychotherapy sessions (2,984 patient utterances and 2...

Social research is plagued by many biases. Most of them are due to situation specificity of social behavior and can be explained using a theory of situation specificity. The historical background of situation specificity in personality social psychology research is briefly sketched, then a theory of situation specificity is presented in detail, with as centerpiece the relationship between the b...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to develop and validate a novel self-administered questionnaire for assessing the patient's own range of motion (ROM) of the wrist and the elbow. METHODS In a prospective clinical study from January 2015 to June 2015, 101 consecutive patients were evaluated with a novel, self-administered, diagram-based, wrist motion assessment score (W-MAS) and elbow moti...

Today’s software development environment requires tools and techniques for accurate, efficient evaluation of product reliability. To be successful, SRE must address the common, yet complex issues facing companies when assessing their product’s reliability, such as the large number of customer usage scenarios, limited reliability evaluation times, and comparisons with competing products.