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This study uses evidence from a longitudinal survey (PISA Plus, Germany) to examine the potential of bias in international large-scale assessments (ILSAs). In PISA Plus, participation was mandatory at the first measurement point, but voluntary at the second measurement point. The study provides evidence for relevant selection bias regarding student competencies and background variables when participation is voluntary. Sample dropout at the second measurement point was related to characteristics such as family background, achievement in mathematics, reading and science, and other student and school demographic variables at both the student and school levels, with lower performing students and those with less favorable background characteristics having higher dropout frequencies, from which higher dropout probabilities of such students can be inferred. We further contrast the possibilities for addressing non-response through weight adjustments in longitudinal surveys with those in cross-sectional surveys. Considering our results, we evaluate and confirm the validity and appropriateness of strict participation rate requirements in ILSAs. Likely magnitudes of bias in cross-sectional studies in varying scenarios are illustrated. Accordingly, if combined participation rates drop below 70%, a difference of at least one-fifth of a standard deviation in an achievement score between non-respondents and participants leads to relevant bias. When participation drops below 50%, even a very small difference (one-tenth of a standard deviation) will cause non-negligible bias. Finally, we conclude that the stringent participation rate requirements established in most ILSAs are fully valid, reasonable, and important since they ensure a relatively low risk of biased results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the present research, we investigated the relation between changes in students’ state self-control capacity and their motivational test-taking effort over the course of an achievement test. Thereby, we considered trait self-control as a major predictor of achievement-related behavior as a covariate. N = 1840 apprentices repeatedly rated their state self-control capacity and the test-taking effort they invested while working on a 140-min achievement test in mathematics and science. Using growth curve analyses, our results revealed correlated decreases in state self-control capacity and the test-taking effort invested over the course of the test. Furthermore, we found that trait self-control helped to keep state self-control capacity and test-taking effort at a higher level over the course of the test. Our results support the assumption of the process model of self-control that waning self-control capacity is reflected in reduced motivational effort. Furthermore, our findings provide evidence that self-control might play a crucial role in students’ test-taking behavior in large-scale assessment studies. By modeling changes in state self-control capacity and effort investment while considering trait self-control, we provide an alternative approach for investigating self-control-dependent processes and the underlying mechanisms of self-control in achievement situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In low-stakes educational assessments, test takers might show a performance decline (PD) on end-of-test items. PD is a concern in educational assessments, especially when groups of students are to be compared on the proficiency variable because item responses gathered in the groups could be differently affected by PD. In order to account for PD, mixture item response theory (IRT) models have been proposed in the literature. Methods: In this article, multigroup extensions of three existing mixture models that assess PD are compared. The models were applied to the mathematics test in a large-scale study targeting school track differences in proficiency. Results: Despite the differences in the specification of PD, all three models showed rather similar item parameter estimates that were, however, different from the estimates given by a standard two parameter IRT model. In addition, all models indicated that the amount of PD differed between tracks, in that school track differences in proficiency were slightly reduced when PD was accounted for. Nevertheless, the models gave different estimates of the proportion of students showing PD, and differed somewhat from each other in the adjustment of proficiency scores for PD. Conclusions: Multigroup mixture models can be used to study how PD interacts with proficiency and other variables to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms behind PD. Differences between the presented models with regard to their assumptions about the relationship between PD and item responses are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The reduced C*-algebra of the interior of the isotropy in any Hausdorff étale groupoid G embeds as a C*-subalgebra M of the reduced C*-algebra of G. We prove that the set of pure states of M with unique extension is dense, and deduce that any representation of the reduced C*-algebra of G that is injective on M is faithful. We prove that there is a conditional expectation from the reduced C*-algebra of G onto M if and only if the interior of the isotropy in G is closed. Using this, we prove that when the interior of the isotropy is abelian and closed, M is a Cartan subalgebra. We prove that for a large class of groupoids G with abelian isotropy-including all Deaconu-Renault groupoids associated to discrete abelian groups- M is a maximal abelian subalgebra. In the specific case of k-graph groupoids, we deduce that M is always maximal abelian, but show by example that it is not always Cartan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We consider the conformal decomposition of Einstein’s constraint equations introduced by Lichnerowicz and York, on a closed manifold. We establish existence of non-CMC weak solutions using a combination of priori estimates for the individual Hamiltonian and momentum constraints, barrier constructions and fixed-point techniques for the Hamiltonian constraint, Riesz-Schauder theory for the momentum constraint, together with a topological fixed-point argument for the coupled system. Although we present general existence results for non-CMC weak solutions when the rescaled background metric is in any of the three Yamabe classes, an important new feature of the results we present for the positive Yamabe class is the absence of the near-CMC assumption, if the freely specifiable part of the data given by the traceless-transverse part of the rescaled extrinsic curvature and the matter fields are sufficiently small, and if the energy density of matter is not identically zero. In this case, the mean extrinsic curvature can be taken to be an arbitrary smooth function without restrictions on the size of its spatial derivatives, so that it can be arbitrarily far from constant, giving what is apparently the first existence results for non-CMC solutions without the near-CMC assumption. Using a coupled topological fixed-point argument that avoids near-CMC conditions, we establish existence of coupled non-CMC weak solutions with (positive) conformal factor ϕ ∈ W s, p, where p ∈ (1,∞) and s( p) ∈ (1 + 3/ p,∞). In the CMC case, the regularity can be reduced to p ∈ (1,∞) and s( p) ∈ (3/ p, ∞) ∩ [1,∞). In the case of s = 2, we reproduce the CMC existence results of Choquet-Bruhat [10], and in the case p = 2, we reproduce the CMC existence results of Maxwell [33], but with a proof that goes through the same analysis framework that we use to obtain the non-CMC results. The non-CMC results on closed manifolds here extend the 1996 non-CMC result of Isenberg and Moncrief in three ways: (1) the near-CMC assumption is removed in the case of the positive Yamabe class; (2) regularity is extended down to the maximum allowed by the background metric and the matter; and (3) the result holds for all three Yamabe classes. This last extension was also accomplished recently by Allen, Clausen and Isenberg, although their result is restricted to the near-CMC case and to smoother background metrics and data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We study the initial boundary value problem for Einstein's vacuum field equation. We prescribe initial data on an orientable, compact, 3-dimensional manifold S with boundary Σ≠? and boundary conditions on the manifold T= Re+ 0×Σ. We assume the boundaries Σ and { 0 }×, Σ of S and T to be identified in the natural way. Furthermore, we prescribe certain gauge source functions which determine the evolution of the fields. Provided that all data are smooth and certain consistency conditions are met on Σ, we show that there exists a smooth solution to Einstein's equation Ric[ g] = 0 on a manifold which has (after an identification) a neighbourhood of S in T∪ S as a boundary. The solution is such that S is space-like, the initial data are induced by the solution on S, and, in the region of T where the solution is defined, T is time-like and the boundary conditions are satisfied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We prove that the Haar state associated to the compact matrix quantum group SU( N) is faithful for μ∈]−1,1[,μ≠0, and any N≧2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aim to examine similarities and differences in the developmental patterns of habitual (HRM) and situational reading motivation (SRM). We investigated the correlated change of SRM and two aspects of HRM: habitual reading enjoyment and habitual reading for interest. The sample comprised N = 1508 students with four waves of data collections spaced approximately every 18 months. Applying multivariate curve-of-factors models, first we found a decline in all three aspects of reading motivation from T1 to T3, and a stable trajectory from T3 to T4. Second, all three aspects of reading motivation correlated strongly regarding time-specific aspects, as well as level and trend factors. Third, the two HRM aspects showed higher correlations than did any aspect of HRM with SRM. Implications of the correlated declines of HRM and SRM, and for future research on reading motivation in general, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]