BACKGROUND The International Membership Examination (MRCGP[INT]) of the Royal College of General Practitioners UK is a unique collaboration between four South Asian countries with diverse cultures, epidemiology, clinical facilities and resources. In this setting good quality assurance is imperative to achieve acceptable standards of inter rater reliability. This study aims to explore the proces...

A maximum-likelihood yes-no procedure was used to measure minimum detectable gaps (MDGs) at 1 and 4 kHz using two track lengths (15 and 30 trials). Results from 11 normal listeners show no difference between MDGs for the two track lengths, and variability of the MDGs did not differ significantly for the track lengths. Results from simulations indicate that the variability of MDGs from real list...

The Miller Assessment for Preschoolers (MAP) is a standardized screening instrument for preschoolers who are at risk for moderate to severe academic problems. A review of the procedures used to standardize the MAP found that it is a well-developed screening instrument that exhibits the qualities of good item discrimination, good test structure and content, good data collection on normal subject...

We report the development of the Assessment of Individual Motives-Questionnaire (AIM-Q), a new instrument based on an evolutionary psychology theory of human motivation. It provides multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) assessment of individual differences on 15 motive scales. A total heterogeneous sample of N = 1,251 participated in eight studies that evaluated the homogeneity, internal consistency, t...

The components of life must survive in a cell long enough to perform their function in that cell. Because the rate of attack by water increases with temperature, we can, in principle, predict a maximum temperature above which an active terrestrial metabolism cannot function by analysis of the decomposition rates of the components of life, and comparison of those rates with the metabolites' mini...

The Youth Sport Environment Questionnaire (YSEQ) had been developed from Group Environment Questionnaire, a well-known measure of team cohesion. The aim of this study was to adapt and examine the reliability and validity of the Farsi version of the YSEQ. This version was completed by 455 athletes aged 13-17 years. Results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that two-factor solution showed...

This study used a theoretically-derived set of items of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment to develop the Achenbach Self-Control Scale (ASCS) for 7-16 year olds. Using a large dataset of over 20,000 children, who are enrolled in the Netherlands Twin Register, we demonstrated the psychometric properties of the ASCS for parent-, self- and teacher-report by examining internal and...

Since its development, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) has been widely used in both research and practice. The SDQ screens for positive and negative psychological attributes. This review aims to provide an overview of the psychometric properties of the SDQ for 4- to 12-year-olds. Results from 48 studies (N = 131,223) on reliability and validity of the parent and teacher SDQ a...

The assessment of inter-rater reliability is a topic that is infrequently addressed in Caenorhabditis elegans research, despite the existence of sophisticated statistical methods and the strong interest in the field in obtaining reliable and accurate data. This study applies statistical modeling as a robust means of analyzing the performance of worm researchers measuring the stage of worm devel...

Animals learn some things more easily than others. To explain this so-called prepared learning, investigators commonly appeal to the evolutionary history of stimulus-consequence relationships experienced by a population or species. We offer a simple model that formalizes this long-standing hypothesis. The key variable in our model is the statistical reliability of the association between stimul...