Mihaiela Ristei Gugiu

A Critical Appraisal of Standard Guidelines for Grading Levels of Evidence

Over the past 30 years, a general consensus has emerged within the medical community regarding the essential role served by grading guidelines in evaluating the quality of evidence produced by a medical research study. Specifically, consensus exists regarding the hierarchy of evidence, where randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the ‘‘gold standard’’ followed by nonrandomized controlled trials (non-RCTs) and uncontrolled trials. As guidelines have become more sophisticated, processes have been developed for downgrading poorly conducted studies and upgrading strong studies. Lists of threats to internal validity have been disseminated, thereby assisting reviewers in grading studies. However, despite these many accomplishments, considerable issues remain unresolved with respect to how to evaluate the strength of evidence produced by flawed RCTs versus well-conducted non-RCTs. The purpose of this article is to evaluate existing evidence-based grading guidelines and to offer suggestions for how such guidelines may be improved.

Age-Related Progressions in Story Structure in Young Children's Narratives

Purpose Prior theoretical and empirical work has referenced several broad stages of narrative development, particularly in terms of young childrens understanding of story structure. However, there is considerable variation in how story structure has been defined and assessed across these studies. The aims of the present study were threefold: (a) to test the unidimensionality of items designed to assess story-structure knowledge, (b) to examine story-structure item difficulty levels, and (c) to examine age-related progressions on individual story-structure components across 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds. Method Participants included 386 children (M = 4.8 years, SD = 11.67 months) from the Narrative Assessment Protocol study (http://www.narrativeassessment.com/), which was designed to revise a new narrative assessment tool for children between the ages of 3 and 6 years. Results Factor analysis indicated that 16 of 21 items reflecting story-structure knowledge constituted a unidimensional construct. Individual story-structure item analyses further revealed that establishing subgoals and tracking the overall goals in the stories were particularly challenging for 3- and 4-year-olds. Conclusion These findings hold implications for refinement of theoretical models of story-structure emergence in early childhood.

EU Enlargement and Anticorruption: Lessons Learned from Romania

Abstract Since early 2000, the European Union (EU) recognized the importance of curbing corruption and began to require that candidate countries adopt and implement anticorruption strategies prior to accession. Given Romania’s long struggle with corruption, it was required to adopt more anticorruption strategies than any other candidate to date. The present paper will elaborate upon the degree to which the EU was able to influence domestic political will, identify and discuss lessons learned from Romania that may aid the EU in future enlargements, and evaluate whether the ‘carrot’ approach was more effective than the ‘stick’ approach in propagating domestic political will.

Levels of Evidence: A Reply to Berger and Knoll

Although a randomized controlled trial (RCT) provides the strongest level of evidence when properly conducted, it is by no means the only research design capable of supporting causal claims. As discussed in Gugiu and Gugiu, numerous non-RCTs are able to produce valid and reliable results, providing they can establish approximately equivalent treatment groups at baseline. The purpose of this article is to respond to the issues raised by Berger and Knoll.

Determining the Minimum Reliability Standard Based on a Decision Criterion.

ABSTRACT The .70 and .80 reliability standards, proposed by Jum Nunnally, are widely employed across a spectrum of research domains. Nonetheless, due to their arbitrary nature, both standards fail to satisfy the needs of researchers. This paper presents a set of formulas that can be used to compute minimum reliability standards as a function of a decision criterion (margin of error). An example based on a study of preliteracy is considered, for which a two-facet generalizability theory design was employed to estimate a g-coefficient. The minimum reliability standard was used to determine whether the decision criterion was satisfied by the observed reliability coefficient.

Utilizing Item Analysis to Improve the Evaluation of Student Performance

One of the cornerstones of teaching is the evaluation of student performance. Traditionally, such evaluations are performed through the administration of exams, quizzes, research papers, and group projects. Although faculty are accustomed to evaluating students, rarely do they evaluate the quality of the aforementioned methods used to assess student knowledge. The present study will illustrate how certain measurement theory techniques (i.e., item difficulty, index of discrimination, Cronbachs alpha, and point biserial correlation) can be utilized to investigate the reliability and validity of student performance and what their impact is on grade distribution. Additionally, a new method for performing item analysis is proposed. To demonstrate the applicability of measurement theory in estimating the reliability and validity of student performance, we draw from one of the authors experiences in teaching an introductory course in political behavior.