The Social Security Administration (SSA) has been engaged in a major effort to redesign the process for determining disability for cash benefits and medical assistance under its Social Security ...Disability Insurance (SSDI), Title II of the Social Security Act and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Title XVI of the Social Security Act. Because of the complexity and far-reaching impact of its efforts, SSA concluded that the redesign effort requires extensive research, testing, and validation, as well as further development of some of its components before national implementation. The effect of the new determination process on the number and characteristics of future beneficiaries also needs further study. The agency asked the National Academies to provide ongoing independent and unbiased review of, and recommendations on, its current and proposed research as it relates to the development of a revised disability decision process including the approach, survey design, and content of the complex multiyear Disability Evaluation Study (DES).
The present report is the third in a series of short interim reports of the National Academies' Committee to Review the SSA's Disability Decision Process. This third interim report relates directly to one of the contract tasks-review of the design, approach, and content of the DES, as proposed by SSA's contractor for the survey, Westat, Inc. This report is limited to a brief review of the sample design (including that of the pilot study), instruments and procedures, and response rates goals developed by Westat and provided by SSA in June 1999 to the committee for its review and recommendations. It also comments on the proposed timeline for initiation of each phase of the survey.
With a lack of consensus of what evaluation is within the field of evaluation, there is a difficulty in communicating to nonevaluators what evaluation is and how evaluation differs from research. To ...understand how evaluation is defined, both evaluators and researchers were asked how they defined evaluation and, if at all, differentiated evaluation from research. Overall, evaluators believed research and evaluation intersect, whereas researchers believed evaluation is a subcomponent of research. Furthermore, evaluators perceived greater differences between evaluation and research than researchers did, particularly in characteristics relevant at the beginning (e.g., purpose, questions, audience) and end (e.g., rendering value judgments, disseminating results) of studies. This study suggests that greater consensus on a definition of evaluation is needed to be able to distinguish the field and discipline of evaluation from related fields and to be able to communicate this information to nonevaluators.
This article summarizes the research base on teacher effectiveness in physical education from a historical perspective and explores the implications of the recent emphasis on student performance and ...teacher observation systems to evaluate teachers for physical education. The problems and the potential positive effects of using student performance scores as well as establishing a comprehensive evaluation program are explored with supportive evidence that some level of accountability is necessary in the field to make significant change. Verf.-Referat (geändert).
Inspired to perform Walumbwa, Fred O.; Muchiri, Michael K.; Misati, Everlyne ...
Journal of organizational behavior,
03/2018, Letnik:
39, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Emerging research evidence across multiple industries suggests that thriving at work is critically important for creating sustainable organizational performance. However, we possess little ...understanding of how factors across different organizational levels stimulate thriving at work. To address this gap, the current study proposes a multilevel model that simultaneously examines contextual and individual factors that facilitate thriving at work and how thriving relates to positive health and overall unit performance. Analysis of data collected from 275 employees, at multiple time periods, and their immediate supervisors, representing 94 work units, revealed that servant leadership and core self-evaluations are 2 important contextual and individual factors that significantly relate to thriving at work. The results further indicated that thriving positively relates to positive health at the individual level, with this relationship partially mediated by affective commitment. Our results also showed that collective thriving at work positively relates to collective affective commitment, which in turn, positively relates to overall unit performance. Taken together, these findings suggest that work context and individual characteristics play significant roles in facilitating thriving at work and that thriving is an important means by which managers and their organizations can improve employees' positive health and unit performance.
This study compares alternative ways of disentangling the effects of level (the tendency for a person to be high, medium, or low across all factors) and shape (the tendency for a person to have a ...distinct pattern of factors on which they are high, medium, or low) in profile analyses. This issue is particularly relevant to performance appraisals where it is often useful to identify specific strengths and weaknesses over and above a person global performance, but also to person-centered analyses more generally where the observation of qualitative (shape) differences between profiles is often used as justification for the added value of profiles. Substantively, this study illustrates these issues in the identification of profiles of teachers based on multidimensional students' ratings of their effectiveness, using an archival data set of 31,951 class-average ratings based on the Students' Evaluations of Educational Quality (SEEQ) instrument collected over a 13-year period. The results show the superiority of a factor mixture operationalization of teaching effectiveness in which a global effectiveness factor was used to control for unnecessary level effects in the profiles.
This paper examines the volume and type of anonymous comments academics receive in student evaluations of courses and teaching (SETs) at the 16,000 higher education institutions that collect this ...data at the end of each teaching
period. Existing research has increasingly pointed to the negative issues of student surveys, but very little research has focused on the volume, type, and impact of anonymous student comments on academics. This paper analyses the survey
results of 674 academics to inform higher education leaders and the sector more widely of the amount and type of abusive comments academics are receiving. The work also demonstrates that the highest volume, most derogatory, and most
threatening abuse is directed towards women academics and those academics from marginalised groups. The paper finds that previous estimates of the rate and severity of abusive comments that academics receive, and the impact to academics'
wellbeing, mental health, and career progression, have underestimated what is taking place. The paper argues that many universities are failing to protect their staff from this abuse, and the prejudice nature of SET results, which will
continue to have a negative impact on the career progression of marginalised academics - a major flaw in a sector that prides itself on diversity and inclusion. Author abstract
Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are an important point of assessment for faculty in curriculum development, tenure and promotion decisions, and merit raises. Faculty members utilise SETs to ...gain feedback on their classes and, hopefully, improve them. The question of the validity of student responses on SETs is a continuing debate in higher education. The current study uses data from two universities (n = 596) to determine whether and under what conditions students are honest on in-class and online SETs, while also assessing their knowledge and attitudes about SETs. Findings reveal that, while students report a high level of honesty on SETs, they are more likely to be honest when they believe that evaluations effectively measure the quality of the course, the results improve teaching and benefit students rather than the administration, and when they are given at the end of the term. Honesty on evaluations is not associated with socio-demographic characteristics.
This study sought to determine whether an evaluator conducting electronic course evaluations in person in a classroom increased response rates. At a large public university in the United States, ...course evaluations were being conducted electronically, attaining a response rate of <50% over several semesters. At the end of the Spring 2015 at this university, an evaluator entered several classrooms having a total enrollment of 273 students and guided students through the process of completing course evaluations using their mobile devices. A response rate of 78.4% was achieved. The process described in this study provides evidence that response rates can be increased in similar circumstances. In addition, several ways the technology described could be used in the future for course evaluation are discussed.
A core motivation for the widespread teacher evaluation reforms of the past decade was the belief that these new systems would promote teacher development through high-quality feedback. We examine ...this theory by studying teachers’ perceptions of evaluation feedback in Boston Public Schools and evaluating the district's efforts to improve feedback through an administrator training program. Teachers generally reported that evaluators were trustworthy, fair, and accurate but that they struggled to provide high-quality feedback. We find little evidence that the training program improved perceived feedback quality, classroom instruction, teacher self-efficacy, or student achievement. Our results illustrate the challenges of using evaluation systems as engines for professional growth when administrators lack the time and skill necessary to provide frequent, high-quality feedback.
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