In accordance with appraisal theory, relationships among four psychological constructs within an individual are examined: work-specific locus of control, motivational regulation, work passion, and work intentions. A survey was administered electronically to a database of working professionals, and 2654 responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Locus of control variables were significantly related to all three forms of motivational regulation in employees. Three of the five possible relationships between forms of motivational regulation and work passion variables were found to be significant, in part supporting the importance of autonomous regulation to both harmonious passion and obsessive passion in the employee appraisal process. Partial mediation testing indicated that internal locus of control directly contributed somewhat to harmonious passion, and the same was found to be true for external locus of control and obsessive passion. Both work passion variables predicted work intentions, but stronger relationships were found between harmonious passion and work intentions. Findings and practical implications are discussed.

This article describes the development and validation of the Motivation Beliefs Inventory (MBI), a new instrument for measuring leaders’ motivation beliefs. For decades, organizational scholars and a small number of motivation researchers have urged leaders to examine their beliefs related to employee motivation. Answering this challenge was difficult, however, given the lack of instruments designed to measure motivation beliefs at all, much less beliefs from a range of prevalent theories. Using principal components and parallel analyses, the 20-item Motivation Beliefs Inventory (MBI) was created to measure motivation beliefs along four theoretical lines: reinforcement theory; expectancy-valence theory; achievement motivation theory; and self-determination theory. The instrument was validated in two studies involving large samples of businesspeople (n=1322 and 712). Validity and reliability analyses revealed the instrument demonstrates acceptable psychometric properties. Four subscales, each representing a single theory, were confirmed and demonstrated alpha coefficients as follows: reinforcement theory, .77; expectancy-valence theory, .71; achievement motivation theory, .82; self-determination theory, .77. The entire Motivation Beliefs Inventory produced a strong alpha coefficient of .77. The creation of a new instrument like the MBI opens fresh possibilities for both practitioners and scholars. While workplace practitioners now have the ability to measure a leader’s beliefs about motivation, researchers can use the instrument to test for differences in these beliefs among leaders in different occupations, companies, industries, and countries. Given the link between leader beliefs and behavior, the article concludes with a discussion about belief strength, and the challenges and opportunities of empirically investigating leaders’ beliefs about what motivates employees.

The Nonprofit Ethics Survey serves as the only empirically supported survey instrument specifically designed for nonprofit organizations to assess their ethical culture. Development of the instrument occurred through the use of principal components analysis conducted on a sample of 530 nonprofit affiliates. The results of the analysis yielded six parsimonious scales integral to assessing nonprofit ethics. To evaluate the internal reliability of each scale a measure of Cronbach’s Alpha was also calculated. The alpha coefficients ranged from 0.86 - 0.94, indicating the survey provides a reliable means of measuring the constructs integral to assessing organizational ethics in nonprofit agencies. The creation of a statistically sound instrument designed for use with nonprofit organizations ensures that nonprofit leaders have the needed tools to accurately self-assess.

Critics complain that the educational leadership researchers have not produced evidence that demonstrates that principal preparation programs affect student achievement. This study addressed this complaint by focusing on the impact of one exemplary program on graduates and the schools they led. The preponderance-of-evidence strategy used in this qualitatively driven mixed-methods study uncovered apparent linkages between student achievement, principal behavior, and the principals’ preparation program. One finding suggested that the program’s cohort design produced lagged-socialization effects after the actual program ended. The study also demonstrated that, because of inevitable selection effects, answering impact questions is much more difficult than critics assume.

Situated in the broader context of academic administration and senior executive university leadership, this study examined variables correlated with self-reported satisfaction and performance among community college and four-year university presidents in four densely populated north American states. The results of our analysis suggest that personal and institutional demographics as well as measures of institutional discord are significant predictors of self-reported presidential satisfaction and performance. It was found that malleable factors – such as the difference in perception between what ‘is’ and what ‘should be’ – are more influential in predicting satisfaction and performance than fixed factors, such as personal and institutional demographics.

In recent years, policy makers and researchers once again have embraced the traditional idea that quasi-experimental research designs (or reasonable facsimiles) can provide the sort of valid and generalizable knowledge about "what works" that educational researchers had promised-but never really produced-during the previous century. Although critics have challenged this thinking, to date most critiques have been more epistemological than methodological. The purpose of this article is to critique neo-scientific thinking about case study methods. In the process of doing this, the article also provides a more general, methodologically oriented critique of neo-scientific thought. The authors use a mixed-method, multiyear study of a reform initiative to keep their discussion tethered to relatively concrete methodological concerns.

International students and the faculty and administrators charged with their oversight were surveyed at two religiously affiliated, private universities to determine the extent of their adjustment problems in the United States. Although the international students were found to have only minor adjustment problems in the twelve areas covered by the Michigan International Student Problem Inventory, university administrators and faculty consistently overestimated the extent of these problems and misunderstood the relative importance of the various problem areas. Hierarchical regression analysis was then used to decompose the variation in student problems into demographic and English language components, where results revealed that problems with the English language were the largest single determinant of international student problems, followed in effect size by marital status and country of origin.

Over the last 15 years the number of international students studying at universities in Taiwan has increased dramatically; however, to date, there have been few studies that measured the cultural adjustment problems that this diverse group of students experience. To remedy this problem, this study gathered data from 1,174 international students and 189 faculty and staff members at 15 universities in Taiwan that described the extent of these problems in 12 different areas. Using independent sample t-tests and multiple regression analysis, this study found that the cultural adjustment problems experienced by international students were relatively minor, that faculty and staff consistently overstated these problems, and most importantly, problems with the English language explained more of the variation in both student and faculty and staff responses.

Although the 1990s represented an expansive period for business schools in the United States the past few years have seen a significant drop in demand for this once popular degree program. As many schools of business struggle to retain their market share in this increasingly competitive environment, one powerful, but sometimes overlooked, strategy is to survey program graduates to better understand the many ways in which they may have benefited from their program. Because this information can be used for more focused advertising, targeted recruitment, and program improvements, the authors present a plan for gathering, analyzing, and using this important information. In their plan, they use results from a recent survey of more than 2,200 Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduates from a business school associated with a private university in the southwestern United States.

(EPI) is a non-profit, non-partisan, and non-governmental organization dedicated to policy-based research on educational opportunity for all students. With offices in Washington, DC, Toronto, Ontario, and Melbourne, Australia, EPI is a collective association of researchers and policy analysts from around the world dedicated to the mission of enhancing our knowledge of critical barriers facing students and families throughout the educational pipeline. The mission of EPI is to expand educational opportunity for low-income and other historically-underrepresented students through high-level research and analysis. By providing educational leaders and policymakers with the information required to make prudent programmatic and policy decisions, we believe that the doors of opportunity can be further opened for all students, resulting in an increase in the number of students prepared for, enrolled in, and completing postsecondary education. is currently associate professor in the School of Education at the University of San Diego, where he has also served as associate dean and director of strategic programs. Prior to joining the university faculty, he was project director for the national Direct Student Loan Evaluation project at Macro International, as well as the director of federal policy analysis at the American Council on Education, where he represented the interests of the higher education community before the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government. Dr. Galloway received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of California, San Diego, and his doctoral degree in the economics of education from Harvard University. His research interests include higher education policy, the economics of education, and econometrics. is a Senior Analyst and Project Director with ORC Macro, International, where he specializes in issues relating to postsecondary education policy. His professional efforts have examined the impact of Federal regulations upon student retention and propensity for loan default, and postsecondary institutions' perceptions of burden; the optimality of the current statistical model used to identify aid applications in need of verification; the attitudes and practices of financial aid professionals with respect to the verification process, as well as their expectations regarding the Office of Federal Student Aid's Front End Business Integration; and the level of awareness of financial aid resources among high school students and their parents. As a political economist with a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Maryland, his personal endeavors focus on incentive structures in the efficient provision of collectively consumed goods and services. FOREWORD In 1994, The Clinton Administration pushed and …

For the last thirty years, the rapid growth in information technologies has led to an absolute explosion in the production and diffusion of statistical software. With dropdown menus replacing meticulously written computer code, it now seems that literally anyone can run a three-way analysis of variance, perform generalized statistical tests for a proportional hazards model, or use varimax rotation to maximize the value of factor loadings. Despite the fact that a nuanced understanding of techniques like these takes years of theoretical study and empirical practice, aspiring quantitative researchers can now perform these procedures in a matter of minutes on such popular types of statistical software as SAS and SPSS. As a result, there has been a growing mismatch between what many quantitative researchers are able to do and what they are able to understand.