Measuring teacher attitudes and expectations toward students with ADHD: development of the test of knowledge about ADHD (KADD).

OBJECTIVE: The attitudes, expectations, and behaviors of teachers toward children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may have a lasting impact on the academic self-efficacy and success of students with ADHD. Yet, to date there exists no standardized measure of teacher attitudes or expectations toward children with ADHD. The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to measure teacher attitudes and expectancies toward children with ADHD. METHOD: The Test of Knowledge About ADHD (KADD) was constructed based on the error-choice method, which is an indirect method of attitude measurement. This psychometric approach was utilized to reduce patterns of response distortions that produce systematic errors in direct attitudinal assessment. Elementary school teachers (N = 103) completed the error-choice instrument. CONCLUSION: Results indicated adequate to good internal consistency reliability for the KADD for this sample, with a Cronbach's coefficient alpha of 0.82. Additionally, results yielded initial discriminant evidence to suggest that the KADD has construct validity for this sample. Implications for the use of this instrument in applied areas are discussed.

Further validation of new scales measuring adolescent alcohol and other drug abuse.

The Personal Experience Inventory (PEI) is a recently developed self-report inventory that measures problem severity and psychosocial risk factors associated with adolescent alcohol and other drug involvement. Although previous studies have provided initial support for the psychometric properties of the PEI, this validity evidence was based on uncontrolled studies. The present study examined the concurrent validity of the PEI on a new sample using more controlled research procedures. Results indicated that the PEI Basic Problem Severity scales were significantly related to groups defined by DSM-III-R criteria for substance use disorders and by treatment referral recommendations. Also, the main PEI Problem Severity scale, the Personal Involvement scale, correctly classified a significantly greater proportion of participants into referral subgroups than would be expected given the base rates for the sample. This evidence provides additional support for the validity of the PEI as a problem severity measure of adolescent alcohol and other drug use.

Validity of adolescent self-report of alcohol and other drug involvement.

Validity of adolescent self-report of alcohol and drug use and consequential effects and problems is examined. Validity is discussed in terms of its importance in research and clinical work. Also, results from a recent study are presented that focus on self-report temporal stability and response bias tendencies as evidence of validity of self-report. Study results indicate that the great majority of drug clinic and school teenagers gave temporally consistent reports of substance involvement and that only a small proportion of drug clinic and school subjects presented extreme response bias tendencies.

Development of psychosocial scales for the assessment of adolescents involved with alcohol and drugs.

There are differences among adolescents who use alcohol and other drugs not only in the extent and pattern of their use, but also with respect to the factors that may have contributed to or accompany their involvement with drugs. The Personal Experience Scales (PES) is a new self-report inventory developed to assess psychosocial factors that may: (1) predispose or perpetuate adolescent chemical involvement, (2) complicate chemical abuse treatment, or (3) require treatment in their own right. This paper provides an overview of the development of the PES. Scale construction procedures, scale characteristics, and evidence of scale validity are reported.

Development of problem severity scales for the assessment of adolescent alcohol and drug abuse.

The Chemical Dependency Adolescent Assessment Project was established to develop a standardized assessment battery to provide a multidimensional description of problems associated with alcohol and drug use by adolescents that can assist in the identification, referral, and treatment of adolescent alcohol and drug abuse. This paper provides an overview of the development of the portion of the assessment battery that addresses problem severity of alcohol and drug abuse. Scale construction procedures, scale characteristics, and relationships of scales with external variables are discussed.

Measurement of the nurse organizational climate of neonatal intensive care units.

The concept of organizational climate is important for the study and understanding of work organizations. Researchers have not yet studied the organizational climate of hospital intensive care units, so it is not clear that the dimensions useful in description of other work settings will be appropriate for conceptualizing neonatal intensive care units (NICU's). This study investigated nurse perceptions of the organizational climate of NICU's in a sample of 18 hospitals. The Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire was modified for use in the NICU setting. A set of homogeneous climate scales was developed from the revised instrument. The six scales of the resulting instrument, the Nursing Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire, Form B (NOCDQ-B), demonstrated median internal-consistency reliability of .69 on cross-validation. Analysis of variance indicated that each of the six NOCDQ-B dimensions served to differentiate the NICU's in the study. Further, significant relationships were found at the unit mean level between three of the six NOCDQ-B scales and nurse satisfaction, as measured by the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire.