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The article discusses the journey of a remarkable collection of Nez Perce material culture, including an elk-hide dress, which ended up at the Ohio Historical Society before being repatriated to the Nez Perce Tribe. Donated by missionary Henry Spalding in 1847, the collection survived a long and intricate journey before being rediscovered by Nez Perce National Historical Park curators in 1976 in spalding, Idaho. Despite challenges, the Nez Perce Tribe successfully raised funds to purchase it.

Objective: Patient satisfaction is a personal evaluation of health-care services that is often used as an indicator of quality of care. The aim of this study was to identify aspects of hospital care that affect patient satisfaction by examining the structural and convergent validity of an in-house questionnaire.Methods: The sample consisted of 3320 patients discharged from an Italian public hospital. The questionnaire included items exploring communication with nurses and physicians, pain management, quality of accommodation, and discharge information. Data were analyzed using the Rasch model.Results: From the patients’ perspective, the number of response options was excessive and the questionnaire proved to have both medical and accommodation dimensions. Patients, on average, gave higher satisfaction scores to the medical dimension over the accommodation dimension. Higher satisfaction was associated with kindness and courtesy of the nursing staff, doctors’ courtesy, and the quality of bed linen.Conclusion: The results support the administration of the questionnaire but suggest change in the hospital’s analytical procedures in order to match the drivers of satisfaction as seen by the patients.

Through the use of OCLCDiMeMa’s CONTENTdm software and a RealSystems Server 8, this article outlines the process of converting two collections of AfricanAmerican oral histories recorded on cassette tapes to digital streaming files at the Washington State University Libraries.

The Rasch measurement principles espoused in the Bond & Fox (2001) volume reviewed elsewhere in this journal are routinely adopted by Australia's major educational measurement projects (e.g., by Australian Council for Educational Research, Educational Testing Centre). Yet those ideas are yet to have their full impact in smaller research projects in educational and developmental psychology. A number of quantitative analytical techniques used in our disciplines are able to help us to draw conclusions like “Betty is better than ormore developed than Bob”, but Rasch measurement is uniquely placed to help us conclude that “Betty is this muchbetter than ormore developed than Bob.” In educational and psychological statistics, we regularly presume the “interval” nature of our research data, but only the Rasch model sets about to ensure that the units of measurement maintain their unit value across the whole achievement or development scale.

Abstract: Observations were made of the progressive change in the cognitive development of 141 students over the course of their secondary education in an Australian private school. Cognitive development was measured in years 8, 10 and 12 usingBond's Logical Orerations Test. Rasch analysis of each of the data sets provided ability estimates for students in the year groups of 1993 (year 8), 1995 (year 10) and 1997 (year 12). Twenty-nine students from the year group of 1993 were tested on all three occasions. We analysed data from these 29 students in order to investigate the children's cognitive development across years 8, 10 and 12. We also examined the influence of the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE)Thinking Science program on the cognitive development and scholastic achievement of these students. We found increased mental growth between years 8 and 10 for most students in theThinking Science cohort, which could not be predicted from their starting levels. There was a significant correlation between cognitive development and the scholastic achievement of these students. Although boys as a group were more advanced in cognitive development than girls in years 8 and 10, no difference was found in the rate of cognitive change based on sex up to year 10. However girls showed cognitive gains across years 10–12 which were not found in boys. The students who were new to the school also showed increased cognitive development in years 11 and 12. Students who had experienced theThinking Science course were more cognitively developed than students who joined the school after the intervention had taken place. This study supports the claim of Adey and Shayer that there is a relationship between cognitive development and scholastic achievement, even though we used different measures of cognitive development and scholastic achievement.

A number of tests have been constructed in an attempt to measure the psychological construct computer anxiety. Although some of these studies have reported dimensions of computer anxiety as a result of factor analyses, these dimensions have varied in their number and description. Other studies have assumed unidimensionality of this construct. The present study has tested the dimensionality of the computer-anxiety index (CAIN) by Rasch analysis of the responses of 372 eleven- to twelve-year-old elementary school students. Rasch analysis enabled the students' response patterns to each question to be compared with their responses for all other questions in the questionnaire to determine the extent to which that question measured the same underlying variable as the other questions. Results indicated that six of the twenty-six items did not measure the same underlying trait as the other twenty and that several of the accepted items were apparently redundant. The use of the shortened (20-item) CAIN is recommended.

This article focuses on the creation of the book "Applying the Rasch Model: Fundamental Measurement in Human Sciences," by Trevor G. Bond and Christine M. Fox. The absence of an introductory text on Rasch analysis led the authors to write the book. Several editors and colleagues convinced the authors to broaden the scope of their writing. The book implies that Rasch measurement is the model of choice for data analysis in social sciences.